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POVERTY'S   FACTORY 

OR 

THE  CURSE,  CAUSE,  AND  CURE 

OF  ABNORMAL  WEALTH 

BY 

STANLEY  L.  KREBS,  M.A. 


A  plain  statement  of  the  social  and  economic  sins  of  the  day, 
with  the    method   of    their  minimization  through  a   modified 
system  of  representation. 


BOSTON 

ARENA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

COPLEY  SQUARE 
1895 


COPYRIGHTED,  1895, 

BV 

STANLEY  L.  KREBS. 


All  Rights  Reserved. 


ARENA    PRINT. 


TO 

ALL  WHO  ARE 
EARNESTLY   SEEKING   A 

PRACTICABLE  REMEDY   FOR   EXISTING   EXTREMES 
AND  THEIR   RESULTANT  EVILS, 

THIS    LITTLE  VOLUME 
IS   AFFECTIONATELY   DEDICATED, 

AS  A 
SUGGESTION. 


READING,  May  o,  1895. 


1383779 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTION  AND  FACTS. 

PAGE 

The  seven  spheres — The  body  physical  and 
economic — Equal  versus  equitable  distribu- 
tion— Christ  and  the  rich  and  poor — Ex- 
amples of  enormous  wealth — Normal  versus 
abnormal  wealth 7 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE   CURSE. 

Trampism — The  relation  of  the  saloon  to  pov- 
erty usually  misunderstood  —  Child  labor 
— The  "  Sweating  system  " — Prostitution — 
Estrangement  of  the  masses  from  the 
Church  —  Dishonesty  and  fraud  —  The  de- 
cline of  patriotism — The  breaking  down  of 
home  life 26 

CHAPTER  III. 

OBJECTIONS. 

The  rich  invest  their  money  and  thus  give  em- 
ployment to  thousands — One  versus  many 
stockholders — The  central  tenet  of  modern 
Socialism  reviewed 61 

CHAPTER  IV. 

INEFFECTIVE    CURES. 

Strikes — Their  pathos,  bravery,  and  folly — 
Arbitration — Conciliation — Various  forms 
of  co-operation 69 


6  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   V. 

THE  CAUSE. 

PAGE 

Unjust  laws — The  Senate's  "rule  of  courtesy" 
— Failure  to  enforce  or  abolish  the  Sabbath 
laws — An  insufficient  land  tax — How  to  use 
vacant  lots  to  advantage — Unfair  assess- 
ments— Local  events  a  type  of  all — Dispro- 
portionate or  inequitable  tariff  protection — 
Inflation  of  credit — The  laws  not  always 
right — The  Jewish  social  and  economic 
system 81 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   CURE. 

The  final  cure — The  immediate  attainable 
remedy — Industrial  and  professional  repre- 
sentation—  Advantages  —  Events  in  the 
Pennsylvania  state  legislature  and  in  Eng- 
land— The  ballot — No  use  to  abuse  wealthy 
individuals 126 

CHAPTER  VII. 

A  LIMIT  TO  ALL,  THIXGS. 

Forces  of  destruction  at  work — Significant 
signs — Historical  precedents — "  Tekel " . . .  156 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  DUTY  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  CLERGY. 

Attitude  of  infallibility — Religious  indiffer- 
ence to  the  social  problem  —  Purpose  of 
Christ  and  the  duty  of  Christianity — 
Preachers  as  prophet-reformers — Ministers 
as  citizens — Power  of  the  primaries — The 
legacy  of  citizen  Phillips  Brooks 164 


CHAPTEE  I. 

INTRODUCTION  AND  FACTS. 

IF  it  be  tenable,  on  the  basis  of 
Scripture  revelation,  to  divide  the 
spirit-world  into  seven  circles  or 
spheres,  then  the  Swedenborgian 
doctrine  of  "  correspondences"  seems 
verified  in  the  present  economic 
condition  of  the  nations  of  earth. 
There  is  the  lowest  "pit,"  the  dark 
Tartarus  of  absolute  penury,  despair, 
starvation,  friendlessness,  suicide  ; 
next,  the  "hell"  of  poverty,  drudg- 
ery, semi-starvation,  and  slavery  ; 
then  the  "  Hades  "  of  laboriously 
making  a  fairly  comfortable  living ; 
fourth,  the  "Paradise"  of  possessing 


8  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

a  satisfactory  income ;  fifth,  the 
"first  heaven  "of  ability  to  live  on 
the  interest  of  one's  investments ; 
sixth,  the  "  second  heaven  "  of  a  sur- 
plus and  constantly  accumulating 
interest  ;  and,  lastly,  the  "  third 
heaven"  where  the  Chicago  trinity 
dwelleth,  the  heaven  where  the  streets 
are  of  gold,  the  avenues  paved  with 
stocks,  bonds,  and  mortgages  return- 
ing from  8  to  30  per  cent  interest, 
and  where  the  palaces  are  built  of 
precious  stones  galore. 

In  the  human  body  at  any  given 
time  there  is  a  definite  and  measur- 
able amount  of  blood.  Congestion 
at  one  point  involves  abstraction,  de- 
pletion, or  anemia  at  others.  .Fever 
and  feebleness  are  the  result.  The 
stronger  or  keener  the  congestion, 
the  more  dangerous  the  disease. 

In  the  body  economic  there  is  at 
any  given  date  a  definite  and  meas- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  9 

arable  amount  of  money  and  wealth. 
An  engorgement  of  it  at  one  point 
necessarily  synchronizes  with  a  de- 
pletion at  others  ;  an  enormous  accu- 
mulation of  power  and  possession  in 
the  hands  of  a  few  involves  the 
abstraction  of  them  from  the  hands 
of  the  many.  Fever,  disease,  and 
restlessness  are  the  inevitable  result, 
and  the  stronger  or  more  extreme 
the  congestion,  i.  e.,  the  greater  the 
extremes  of  wealth  and  poverty, 
the  higher  the  national  fever  and 
restlessness.  This  is  precisely  the 
condition  of  things  to-day. 

We  shall  not  plead  for  an  equal 
distribution  of  wealth,  either  free  or 
enforced  by  law.  It  would  be  folly 
to  bewail  the  fact  that  the  hand  or 
foot  has  less  blood  than  the  arm  or 
head.  We  are  not  infatuated  with 
the  dr£am  of  the  Communist,  nor  are 
we  pursuing  the  mathematical  will- 


10  POVESTY'8  FACTORY. 

o'-the-wisp  of  the  Fourierist,  nor  do 
we  feel  fascinated  with  the  towering 
air-castles  of  the  St.  Simonist  ; 
neither  do  we  subscribe  to  the  charm- 
ing creed  of  the  transcendentalist 
nor  render  homage  to  the  plausible 
and  attractive  chimeras  of  the  out- 
and-out  Nationalist.  We  do  not  pine 
to  turn  the  world  or  even  this  nation 
into  one  huge  phalanstery.  No. 
Nevertheless,  we  do  feel  convinced 
that  there  ought  to  be  effected,  not 
an  equal,  but  a  more  equitable  distri- 
bution of  wealth  ;  that  every  organ 
in  the  healthy  human  body  should 
possess  its  proportionate  share  of 
blood  and  nourishment,  and  that 
every  business  and  avocation  in  the 
body  economic  should  be  given — as  it 
is  now  not  given — a  chance,  a  free- 
dom, a  possibility,  to  obtain  its  rel- 
ative portion  of  legal  or  legislative 
support  ;  and  that  comprehensive 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  H 

representation  in  legislative  bodies, 
municipal,  state,  and  national,  can 
and  should  powerfully  assist  in 
effecting  such  a  desirable,  just,  and 
necessary  readjustment. 

In  contemplating  the  present  com- 
plexity of  extremes  and  sufferings  I 
have  sometimes  felt  tempted  to  wish 
that  this  great  economic  sore  of  ab- 
normal wealth  massed  in  the  hands 
of  the  few  might  concentrate  still 
more  and  come  to  a  head  in  one  per- 
son, some  giant,  omnivorous  money- 
king  or  American  Rothschild,  to  the 
end  that  all  men  would  be  forced  to 
see  and  feel  the  awful  power  lodged 
in  that  one  person,  and  compel  the 
government  to  use  the  knife,  i.  e., 
to  confiscate  his  so-called  "  property," 
pensioning  him  and  his  for  life,  and 
thus  to  restore  to  healthy  and  general 
use  the  vital  substance  so  unjustly 
and  perilously  congested. 


12  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

If  majorities  rule,  then,  as  things 
are  and  men  think  noiv,  this  is  the 
age  of  the  deification  of  mammon  and 
the  damnation  of  men. 

I  shall  be  obliged  to  say  many 
things  in  this  paper  which  may  lead 
the  reader  to  the  mistaken  inference 
that  my  sympathies  are  all  one-sided, 
and  that  I  am  trying  to  swell  the 
howl  of  the  average  labor  agitator. 
But  the  fact  is,  as  I  know  from  a  bit 
or  two  of  personal  experience,  that 
when  you  get  alongside  of  the  aver- 
age "labor  leaders,"  if  you  don't  be- 
come as  one  of  a  pack  of  coyotes 
and  howl  in  perfect  unison  with  the 
pack,  you  are  at  once  set  down 
as  currying  favor  of  the  wealthy 
classes,  as  being  subsidized  by  the 
money  power,  etc. ,  etc. ,  ad  nauseam. 
My  sympathies,  like  the  reader's,  are 

divided   between    the  rich   and    the 

• 

poor,  the  capitalist  and  the  laborer. 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  13 

Both  have  their  respective  burdens,  a 
fact  which  each  should  recognize  and 
respect  in  the  other.  I  love  both  ;  I 
blame  both  ;  but  for  different  reasons. 
1  .<hall  say  therefore  whatever  com- 
mends itself  to  my  reason  as  worth 
saying,  and  say  it  without  the  fear 
or  the  favor  either  of  rich  or  poor. 

"The  poor  ye  have  always  with 
you."  I  believe  the  Master.  But  I 
do  hope  and  pray  we  shall  not  have 
as  many  or  as  poor  as  we  have  now. 

"  Woe  unto  the  rich."  I  believe 
the  Master.  The  day  is  dawning 
when  excessive  riches,  abnormal 
wealth,  will  be  judged  as  a  social  sin, 
and  will  be  rendered  impossible  by 
the  nature  of  the  laws.  ' '  Sell  all 
that  thou  hast  and  give  to  the  poor," 
was  the  startling  command  of  the 
Xazarene  to  the  rich  young  ruler,  a 
man  "who  had  great  possessions," 
i.e.,  was  abnormally  rich.  Was  this 


14  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

command  to  distribute  his  wealth 
right  or  wrong  ?  Was  it  just  or  un- 
just to  the  young  millionaire  ?  How 
could  a  man  of  such  extreme  wealth 
congenially  enter  the  brotherhood  of 
carpenters  and  fishermen  ?  Extremes 
kill  brotherhood  and  quench  frater- 
nal love.  The  Master's  order  there- 
fore was  :  ' '  Distribute. " 

In  this  paper  I  do  not  intend  to  dis- 
cuss theories,  but  simply,  1st,  to 
present  facts  that  are  well  authenti- 
cated ;  2dly,  to  seek  the  underlying 
cause  ;  and  lastly,  to  suggest  a  rem- 
edy for  those  forms  of  evil  and  injus- 
tice which  are  palpable  and  gross. 
Let  us  proceed  at  once,  therefore,  to 
collate 

THE  FACTS 

in  the  case,  which  will  prove  beyond 
a  peradventure  the  enormously  in- 
equitable distribution  of  wealth  ob- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  15 

taining  in  this  country  at  the  present 
day.* 

We  have  35,000  millionaires,  50 
multi-millionaires,  and  TO  estates 
which  average  $35,000,000  each. 
The  average  annual  income  of  the 
richest  100  Americans  is  estimated  to 
be  not  less  than  $1,200,000  apiece. 
One  Miss  is  worth  $60,000,000  ;  her 
neighbor  is  put  down  at  $40,000,000  ; 
but  no  one  seems  to  know  just  where 
to  locate  the  limit  of  probability  in  the 
case  of  two  well-known  New  York 
families  and  the  "Chicago  trinity." 

*The  statistical  and  personal  facts  given  in 
this  paper  have  been  taken  from  the  public 
press  and  current  literature.  They  are  already, 
therefore,  the  property  of  the  public.  It  would 
have  been  easy  indeed  to  give  the  names  of  the 
individuals  and  families  alluded  to.  But  I  have 
purposely  withheld  them,  for  the  reason  that  I 
am  anxious  to  raise  the  discussion  or  agitation 
of  the  social  problem  from  the  plane  of  person- 
alities to  that  of  principles. 


16  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

The  line  is  so  far  off  that  it  is  lost  in 
the  shadowy  perspective  of  hundreds 
of  millions,  and  even  billions.  A 
young  lady  member  of  one  of  these 
families,  recently  married,  it  has 
been  charitably  hoped  can  manage  to 
scrape  together  enough  to  live  from 
the  interest  on  a  principal  of  ten  mil- 
lions, especially  if  she  is  economical 
and  does  not  lose  the  world-famous 
Esterhazy  diamond  and  the  Marie- 
Antoinette  ropes  of  pearls  and  the 
tiara  of  diamonds  which  would  have 
paid  a  king's  ransom,  and  the  almost 
priceless  treasures  of  rubies,  sapphires, 
and  amethysts,  all  of  which  she  re- 
ceived as  wedding-presents  purchased 
with  the  pocket-money  and  loose 
change  of  her  brother  and  sister. 

As  to  the  wealth  of  the  second  of 
the  families  above-mentioned  we  may 
catch  a  stray  glimpse  in  the  fact  that 
the  young  adventuress  who  is  said 


PO  VER  TY '  ti  FA  CTOR  Y.  17 

to  be  the  darling  of  another  woman's 
fabulously  rich  husband  and  the 
cause  of  his  family  troubles,  and  upon 
whom  he  is  said  to  lavish  his  financial 
superfluities,  travels  whithersoever 
she  pleases  up  and  down  the  world,  al- 
ways takes  suites  at  the  most  expen- 
sive hotels,  dresses  better  than  any 
woman  in  the  city,  wears  thousands 
of  dollars'  worth  of  diamonds,  and 
spends  money  as  lavishly  as  if  she 
owned  a  letter  of  unlimited  credit  on 
the  United  States,  and  whenever  it 
begins  to  give  out,  always  returns  to 
New  York  for  more,  occasionally  the 
while  depositing  a  baby  in  the  land  of 
the  living,  a  la  the  mistress  of  the 
notorious  Kentucky  ex-congressman. 
We  know  that  the  wife  of  one  of 
the  Chicago  Triumvirate,  finding  that 
city  too  dull  for  her,  takes  up  resi- 
dence in  Washington,  where  she  gives 
banquets  costing  from  three  to  five 


18  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

thousand  dollars  a  single  evening  ; 
whilst  our  ex-postmaster-general  was 
happy  to  vacate  his  office  for  the  rea- 
son, among  others,  that  it  cost  him 
$30,000  a  year  to  live  in  "Washington 
with  his  family. 

Within  limits,  people  can  and  will 
do  what  they  please  with  their  money. 
We  do  not  criticise  them.  We  are 
simply  showing  that  a  few  persons 
own  and  control  a  prodigiously  ab- 
normal amount  of  it. 

Mr.  Chauncey  M.  Depew  said  two 
years  ago:  "Fifty  men  in  these 
United  States  have  it  in  their  power, 
by  reason  of  the  wealth  which  they 
control,  to  come  together  within 
twenty-four  hours,  and  arrive  at  an 
understanding  by  which  every  wheel 
of  trade  and  commerce  may  be 
stopped  from  revolving,  every  avenue 
of  trade  blocked,  and  every  electric 
key  struck  dumb.  Those  fifty  men 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  19 

can  paralyze  the  whole  country,  for 
they  can  control  the  circulation  of  the 
currency  and  create  a  panic  whenever 
they  will." 

Hon.  William  Windom,  late  U.  S. 
Senator  and  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury, said  a  short  while  before  his 
death  :  "I  repeat  to-day  in  substance 
words  uttered  seven  years  ago,  that 
there  are  in  this  country  four  men 
who,  in  the  matter  of  taxation,  pos- 
sess and  frequently  exercise  powers 
which,  if  exercised  in  Great  Britain, 
would  shake  the  throne  to  the  found- 
ation. These  men  may  at  any  time, 
and  for  reasons  satisfactory  to  them- 
selves, by  a  stroke  of  the  pen,  reduce 
the  value  of  property  in  the  United 
States  by  hundreds  of  millions. 
They  may  at  their  own  will  and 
pleasure,  embarrass  business,  depress 
one  city  or  locality  and  build  up  an- 
other, enrich  one  individual  and  ruin 


20  POVER TY ' 8  FA CTOR T. 

his  competitors,  and  when  complaint 
is  made  coolly  reply,  '  What  are  you 
going  to  do  about  it  ?  " 

Such  enormous  wealth  as  has  now 
been  described  is  slowly  but  surely 
falling  under  the  ban  of  sound 
thinkers,  of  public  and  liberal-minded 
men.  Says  Hon.  Judge  Gaynor  : 
"  It  is  wealth  got  by  this  means  and 
by  that,  by  trick  and  device,  but  all 
the  while  according  to  law,  which  is 
coming  under  the  ban  of  the  splendid 
intelligence  and  moral  sense  of  the 
people  of  this  country. "  For  this  rea- 
son and  others,  I  have  often  wondered 
whether  the  conscience  of  some  of 
these  modern  Croesuses  did  not  give 
them  some  trouble.  I  believe  it 
does  at  times.  In  making  returns 
of  incomes  under  the  recent  "  Income 
Tax  "  law,  a  number  of  instances  are 
recorded  in  New  York  city  and  else- 
where of  requests  to  the  officials  made 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  21 

by  the  very  wealthy  to  withhold  their 
names  from  the  public.  The  act 
itself  made  it  a  misdemeanor  for  any 
revenue  officer  to  make  public  the 
contents  of  returns  made  under  that 
act.  But  why  this  anxiety  to  hide 
names  ?  Why  hide,  if  their  wealth 
is  normal  and  their  incomes  honest, 
right,  and  just  ?  Men  are  proud  of 
honorable  success,  and  he  whose 
deeds  are  right  "  seeketh  the  light 
that  his  deeds  may  become  manifest 
that  they  are  wrought  in  God." 

Excessive  wealth  is  coming  to  be 
considered  positively  abnormal,  and 
this  fact  suggests  the  great  impor- 
tance, for  purposes  of  safe  and  sound 
reasoning,  to  discriminate  clearly  be- 
tween 

NORMAL  AND  ABNORMAL  WEALTH. 

Normal  wealth  is  that  amount  of 
property  which  a  man  can  honorably 


22  POVER TY ' S  FA CTOB Y. 

earn  and  save  in  a  lifetime,  starting 
with  little  or  nothing.  How  much  is 
that  ?  In  the  nature  of  things  this 
limit  cannot  be  definitely  fixed.  But 
taking  everything  that  it  is  possible 
to  take  into  the  complex  problem, 
and  in  order  to  avoid  circumlocution 
in  treating  the  subject  before  us,  we 
may  adopt  the  limit  which  business 
men  have  independently  reckoned 
out  and  stated  at  $500,000.  This 
line  may  be  considered  arbitrary. 
But  the  limit  is  somewhere  in  this 
neighborhood.  Laborers  and  profes- 
sional men  can,  by  the  exercise  of 
honesty,  industry,  sobriety,  and  econ- 
omy, honorably  amass  that  amount  ; 
and  wealth  so  obtained,  i.  e.  normal 
wealth,  is,  as  a  rule,  beneficent  both 
to  the  public  and  to  the  character  of 
the  individual  possessor.  It  is  the 
well-earned  result  of  intelligence, 
energy,  perseverance,  and  talent ;  and 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY,  23 

in  the  hands  of  the  wise  and  generous 
becomes  the  means  of  incalculable 
good.  Against  wealth  so  obtained 
and  employed  let  no  tongue  dare  to 
speak.  It  is  the  main  support  of  our 
public  charities  and  churches,  and  the 
fountain  of  national  and  industrial 
progress. 

But  the  moment  this  limit  is  passed 
and  especially  the  million  line,  the  in- 
dividual enters  the  region  where  dark 
and  grave  doubts  naturally  arise  as 
to  the  honesty  and  honorableness  of 
his  methods,  past  and  present.  Of 
course  no  one  can  deny  that  the  man 
who  has  obtained  normal  wealth  may 
have  resorted  to  as  much  dishonesty 
and  fraud,  or  taken  as  shrewd  an  ad- 
vantage of  existing  legislation,  as  the 
millionaire  or  the  multi-millionaire. 
But  it  is  not  likely,  and  even  if  he 
has,  the  damage  to  society  is  not 
nearly  so  great. 


24  POVERTY •' 

If,  therefore,  the  recognized  limit 
of  normal  and  beneficent  wealth  be 
below  the  million  line,  what  shall  be 
said  of  the  enormous  abnormalities 
referred  to  in  preceding  paragraphs 
of  this  paper  ?  Simply  and  briefly 
this :  that  it  is  utterly  impossible, 
without  the  powerful  aid  of  legisla- 
tive force,  juggling  and  chicanery, 
favoritism  or  fraud,  to  amass  such 
prodigious  fortunes.  Josiah  Strong, 
in  his  startling  book,  "  The  New 
Era,"  says  :  "  If  100  workingmen  earn 
each  $1,000  a  year,  they  would  have 
to  work  1,200  or  1,500  years  to  earn 
as  much  as  the  annual  income  of  the 
richest  Americans.  And  if  a  work- 
ingman  could  earn  $1,000  per  day  he 
would  have  to  work  until  he  was 
547  years  old,  and  never  take  a  day 
off,  before  he  could  earn  as  much  as 
some  Americans  are  worth." 

Such  enormous  abnormal  wealth  as 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  25 

here  alluded  to,  massed  in  the  hands 
of  a  moneyed  aristocracy,  is,  beyond 
the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  an  ugly  ex- 
crescence on  the  body  social  and  eco- 
nomic, and  an  infallible  symptom  of 
virus  and  disease  lurking  in  the  body 
politic.  And  of  course  the  worst 
feature  of  this  whole  system  is  seen 
in  its  constant  pressure  and  resistless 
tendency  to  social  disintegration  and 
industrial  slavery,  and  that  the  inno- 
cent and  defenceless  many  must 
suffer  for  the  fortunes  of  the  few. 
For  let  us  now  turn  from  this  fi- 
nancial Olympus  to  "Civilization's 
Inferno  "  and  glance  briefly  at  some 
of  the  results  or  curses,  direct  and 
indirect,  entailed  upon  a  feverish 
and  sickened  society  by  abnormal 
wealth. 


26  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  CURSE. 

First,  Trampism  and  Extreme 
Poverty.  That  this  striking  sign  of 
the  times  is  the  direct  shadow  of  ab- 
normal wealth,  of  its  monopolization 
by  the  few  and  consequent  abstrac- 
tion from  a  more  equitable  distribu- 
tion among  the  many,  is  indicated 
by  the  fact  that  in  1860  there  were 
but  two  millionaires  in  the  United 
States  and  no  tramps.  To-day  we 
have  the  honor  of  claiming  35,000 
millionaires  and  1,500,000  tramps  ! 
Each  millionaire  sun  attended  by  43 
satellite  tramps  !  A  beautiful,  ex- 
hilarating, and  Alpine  variety  of  ex- 
tremes quite  complimentary  to  the 


POVERTY* K  FACTORY.  27 

society  which  permits  it !  And  when 
Coxey  and  his  bedraggled  Common- 
wealers,  who  powerfully  felt  the 
wrong,  clearly  saw  the  source  from 
whence  to  seek  redress,  but  very  un- 
wisely chose  a  sensational  instead  of 
a  sound  method,  came  to  the  nation's 
centre,  they  were  arrested  and  locked 
up  for  accidentally  one  day,  for  a  few 
minutes,  getting  their  weary  and 
half -shod  feet  on  a  national  grass- 
plat — arrested  for  this  to  vindicate 
the  majesty  of  the  law !  While  the 
wealthy,  law- favored  few  who  were 
mainly,  though  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously, responsible  for  their  poverty, 
were  all  the  while  ruthlessly  treading 
on  much  holier  ground,  the  Sabbath 
laws  of  the  land,  and  no  civil  hand 
was  stretched  forth  to  arrest  and  to 
"  vindicate  the  majesty  of  the  law  ! " 
And  all  the  while,  too,  were  com- 
pelling thousands  of  their  industrial 


28  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

slaves  on  railroads,  street  cars,  in 
furnaces  and  factories,  to  trample  on 
the  same  sacred  soil,  and  all  with  ut- 
ter impunity  !  0  consistency,  verily 
thou  art  a  gem  ! 

$50,000,000,000  to  $60,000,000,000 
is  said  to  represent  the  wealth  of  the 
United  States,  which  is  the  wealthiest 
country  in  the  world.  If  this  were 
equally  divided,  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  would  own  from  $800  to 
$1,000  worth  of  property,  and  all 
families  would  be  well-to-do  and 
happy.  But  alas  !  it  is  all  prodig- 
iously unequally  divided  ;  for  TO  per- 
sons own  $2,450,000,000  of  the  fifty 
billions,  and  1,500,000  own  absolutely 
nothing  of  it.  You  say  the  latter 
have  themselves  to  blame.  All  ad- 
mit that  the  slothful,  ignorant,  and 
inconsiderate  under  any  system  must 
suffer  for  their  folly.  The  thriftless 
and  the  shiftless  deserve  nothing, 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  29 

and  they  usually  get  it.  No  sensible 
man  ought  to  help  the  slothful  to 
pull  a  single  weed  out  of  his  neglected 
garden,  nor  give  him,  out  of  maudlin 
charity  (pseudo-charity),  even  so 
much  as  a  crust  of  bread  to  stave  off 
actual  starvation,  for  divine  author- 
ity asserts  that ' '  If  any  man  will  not 
work,  neither  let  him  eat "  (II  Thes. 
3  :  10).  And  we  all  know  that  the 
false  doctrine  which  inculcates  the 
idea  that  ' '  the  world  owes  every  man 
a  living"  has  swelled  the  army  of  the 
tramps,  and  that  the  unsound  teach- 
ings and  unsuccessful  strikes  of 
Trades  Unions  have  contributed  their 
share.  But  all  this  is,  nevertheless, 
not  sufficient  to  explain  the  paradoxi- 
cal situation  confronting  us  to-day, 
which  is  enormous  poverty  right  in 
the  midst  of  enormous  wealth  ;  star- 
vation or  semi-starvation  when  sur- 
rounded by  plenty  ;  the  wonderful 


30  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

increase  of  general  or  national  wealth 
paralleled  by  an  equally  striking  in- 
crease of  poverty  and  trampism.  The 
only  rational  explanation  is  that  the 
increase  of  wealth  has  been  flowing 
into  the  hands  of  the  few  and  has 
been  deflected  from  the  hands  of  the 
many,  who  have  contributed  in  some 
ways,  at  least,  to  its  production,  but 
have  not  shared  in  its  distribution. 

Nor  do  we  in  this  connection  ignore 
the  power  of  the  saloon.  But  we  are 
coming  to  see  and  believe  that  this 
power  in  its  relation  to  poverty  has 
been  generally  misunderstood.  Its 
relation,  we  now  believe,  is  not  causal 
or  primary,  but  reactionary  and  in- 
tensive. The  saloon  reacts  upon  and 
thereby  deepens  and  broadens  general 
poverty,  but  does  not  cause  it  in 
the  first  place,  though  there  are,  of 
course,  cases  of  individuals  spending 
their  all  on  drink.  But  poverty  first 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  31 

exists,  then  the  saloon.  During  the 
recent  financial  depression,  when 
many  men  were  out  of  work  and 
rendered  poor,  47  more  applications 
for  saloon  licenses  were  made  in  this 
county  (Berks,  Pa.)  than  ever  before. 
This  statement  was  made  in  our  dai- 
lies and  not  contradicted.  Poverty 
supports  the  saloon,  and  the  saloon  in- 
creases poverty.  Both  increase  to- 
gether. Poverty  is  the  soil  in  which 
the  weed  thrives.  Fungi  always  grow 
in  spots  of  low  vitality.  With  Editors 
W.  T.  Stead  and  B.  0.  Flower,  two  of 
our  most  energetic  leaders  in  progres- 
sive sociology,  we  agree  in  looking 
upon  the  saloon  not  as  the  poor  man's 
factory,  nor  chiefly  as  his  multiplica 
tion  table,  but  as  his  social  club,  a  re- 
fuge, a  place  of  retreat,  from  the  mis- 
eries of  his  threadbare  home,  wife, 
children,  and  prospects,  a  place  well 
heated,  well  lighted,  well  provided 


6-A  POVERTY ''S  FACTORY. 

with  companions  in  misery,  well 
furnished  with  papers  and  magazines 
and  often  with  music,  where  he  can 
pass  a  happy  hour  or  two  and  enjoy 
a  brief  " surcease  from  sorrow"  in 
the  oblivion  of  beer  and  congenial 
friends. 

Let  us  beware  of  the  cruelty  of 
scoffing  at  his  low  moral  and  sesthet- 
ical  condition.  Eemember  St.  Peter. 
Before  he  got  down  among  the  people 
as  they  were  he  frowned  down  upon 
the  very  thing  he  afterward  looked 
up  to  as  his  refuge,  viz.,  denial  of 
Christ.  If  we  should  put  ourselves 
in  the  place  of  the  poor  man,  his 
social,  mental,  and  moral  surround- 
ings, I  doubt  not  in  the  least  we 
should  be  astounded  to  discover  that, 
instead  of  looking  down  upon  the 
saloon  as  a  curse,  we  should  actually 
look  up  to  it  as  a  refuge  and  a  treat. 
Of  course,  this  is  not  as  things  ought 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  33 

to  be,  but  as  they  are.  Back  of  the 
poor  man's  love  for  the  saloon  is  the 
pressure  of  his  poverty,  with  its  at- 
tendant miseries  ;  and  back  of  his 
poverty  is  the  monopoly  of  enormous 
and  abnormal  wealth. 

Second,  Child  labor.  The  poverty 
of  parents  drives  the  children  to 
work,  while  the  progress  of  invention 
invites  them  and  provides  the  possi- 
bility and  the  job.  Thus  the  tender 
child  is  actually  thrown  into  com- 
petition with  its  own  father  and 
mother,  who  are  forced  by  pinching 
exigency  to  accept  the  inevitable  and 
are  gradually  hardened  to  it.  Thus 
their  children  must  work  and  neglect 
school,  not  for  the  love  of  it,  but  for 
the  life  of  it  ;  and  so  eager  for  a  job 
does  threatened  starvation  or  sup- 
posed dishonor  among  their  equals 
make  them,  that  parents  will  actu- 
ally take  false  oaths  as  to  the  age  of 
3 


34  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

their  little  boy  or  girl,  and  even  teach 
them  to  lie,  simply  to  circumvent  the 
state  laws,  and  all  in  order  that  they 
may  enjoy  the  happiness  of  prolong- 
ing their  delightful  (?)  existence  in 
this  glorious  "land  of  the  free  and 
home  of  the  brave  !  "  1,120,000  child 
laborers  in  the  United  States  to-day  ! 
Child  labor,  being  thus  established, 
at  once  begins  to  entail  all  its  awful 
curses  upon  the  innocent  victims. 
These  are  horribly  familiar  to  all 
observing  minds.  At  the  very  mo- 
ment when  the  halcyon  days  of  youth 
are  just  dawning  and  youthful  hopes, 
bright  and  happy,  budding,  comes  this 
incubus  of  daily  drudgery  or  mo- 
notonous labor  in  confined  and  un- 
healthy factories.  Education,  moral 
culture,  and  physical  health  are 
subordinated  to  the  one  end  of  eking 
out  an  existence,  or  are  neglected 
altogether  ;  and  when  the  poor 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  35 

victims  attain  to  adult  age  the  most 
of  them  are  discharged  to  make  room 
for  children  at  children's  wages,  and 
come  forth  mental,  moral,  and 
usually  physical  imbeciles,  entirely 
unfit  for  life's  struggle  and  especially 
for  the  sacred  duty  and  solemn  privi- 
lege of  parentage.  What  but  damn- 
ing in  the  extreme  must  be  the  pre- 
natal influence  on  babes  born  of  such 
parents?  And  now  comes  the  sad 
requiem  of  this  whole  child  tragedy  ; 
for,  beneath  child  labor  lies  poverty, 
and  beneath  poverty,  the  omnivorous 
monopoly  of  enormous  and  abnormal 
wealth. 

Third,  The  Sweating  System.  It 
makes  one's  nerves  shudder  with 
horror  to  think  that  the  "  sweating  " 
or  industrial  roasting  of  human 
beings  alive  on  the  red-hot  arms  of 
the  Moloch  of  modern  greed  should 
have  actually  solidified  into  a  "sys- 


36  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

tern."  It  is  an  awful  commentary 
on  the  disjointed  condition  of  the 
age.  Think  of  it  !  whole  families 
of  five  to  nine  members  crowded 
together  in  one  or  at  most  two 
rooms  of  city  tenements,  sleeping, 
eating,  working,  washing,  sickening, 
dying  there,  sewing  on  vests,  panta- 
loons, children's  suits,  shirts,  wax- 
flowers,  etc.,  etc.,  stitch,  stitch, 
stitch,  from  morning  to  night,  and 
often  late  into  the  latter  too,  and 
earning  thereby  the  right  royal 
emolument  of  24  to  70  cents  per 
day  !  And  from  this  they  must  pay  a 
proportionately  enormous  rent  and 
feed,  clothe,  and  warm  their  families  ! 
(When  travelling  in  Algeria,  Africa, 
I  met  Kabyles  who  managed  to  live 
comfortably  on  2i  cents  per  day. 
But  that  is  a  feat  of  economics 
altogether  impossible  over  here  in 
America,  even  to  "  sweat-shop " 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  37 

workers.)  While  down  in  the  dark 
and  filthy  cellar,  water  and  offal  from 
a  defective  sewer  lie  stagnant  and 
putrefying,  breeding  the  miasmatic 
germs  of  disease  and  death  which 
the  patient  victims  above  are  forced 
to  inhale.  3,000  "sweat-shop" 
workers  in  Philadelphia  alone  !  70,- 
000  in  New  York  City  !  Think  of 
Chicago!  Think  of  Brooklyn  !  Think 
of  the  country  !  Think  of  the  world  ! 
A  few  observant  philanthropists 
stand  aghast  at  the  death-rate  of 
tenement-house  and  sweat-shop  chil- 
dren ;  but  the  still  greater  horror  to 
my  mind  is  their  birth-rate. 

The  cause  of  all  these  frightful 
horrors  in  "  Civilization's  Inferno  " 
is  the  constant  pressure  exerted  by 
the  highest  or  wealthiest  class  on  all 
beneath  them.  In  the  hands  of  the 
abnormally  rich  is  concentrated  such 
an  enormous  bulk  of  the  nation's 


38  PO  VER  TY '  S  FA  CTOR  Y. 

wealth  and  actual  cash  circulation, 
that  it  is  necessarily  abstracted  in 
large  quantities  from  the  middle 
classes,  who  with  the  small  sums 
left  them  feel  their  inability  to  buy 
higher  grades  of  goods,  or  pay  more 
for  what  they  do  buy,  and  so  the  cry 
has  quite  generally  gone  out,  "  Give 
us  cheaper  articles  !  cheaper  !  cheap- 
er !"  The  poor  employers,  who  are 
after  all  simply  middlemen,  must 
cater  and  yield  to  this  popular  de- 
mand, or  else  perish  too,  and  thus 
they  are  compelled  to  take  advantage 
of  the  misfortunes  of  still  poorer 
classes,  and  the  "  Sweating  System  " 
is  the  inevitable  and  deplorable  re- 
sult. Eemember  this  all  of  you  who 
pay  two  or  three  dollars  for  your 
pantaloons.  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  a  sin  of  cheapness. 

Once  let  loose  and  more  equitably 
and    naturally  and    less    artificially 


POVERTY1  S  FACTORY.  39 

and  partially  distribute  the  enormous 
wealth  dammed  up  in  apoplectic 
purses,  and  all  classes  and  all  lines 
of  industry  would  be  eased  up  and 
purified. 

Meanwhile  the  sweat-shop  reaps 
a  frightful  revenge.  For  no  one 
knows  how  many  children  and  adults 
have  been  swept  out  of  existence  by 
the  dissemination  of  disease  through 
contaminated  articles  made  in  these 
dreadful  pest-holes.  The  great  Eng- 
lish statesman,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  on 
the  eighteenth  birthday  of  his  be- 
loved daughter,  gave  her  a  superb 
riding-habit,  and  proudly  rode  by 
her  side  in  the  park  as  she  wore  it. 
But  now  mark  the  awful  sequel.  As 
soon  as  she  came  home  from  that 
ride,  she  sickened  and  in  a  few  days 
Was  a  corpse.  The  poor  seamstress 
who  had  wrought  the  embroidery  of 
that  garment  lived  in  a  sweat-shop 


40  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

in  the  London  slums.  Her  husband 
was  dying  of  the  worst  form  of 
typhus  contracted  on  the  filthy  spot, 
and  during  the  intervals  of  fever, 
when  he  shook  with  the  chills,  she 
threw  over  him  the  riding-habit  she 
was  working  ;  and  thus  the  microbes 
of  the  dread  scourge  were  borne  from 
the  hovel  of  the  poor  to  the  palace  of 
the  peer. 

Humanity  is  a  unit.  All  classes 
get  into  touch  with  each  other,  when 
there  takes  place  an  electric  exchange 
of  weal  or  woe,  and  Nemesis  slum- 
bers again  in  dreamy  satisfaction. 

Fourth,  Prostitution.  Is  it  a 
marvel  to  be  wondered  at  that 
women  and  girls  reared  in  sweat- 
shops prefer  life  in  brothels,  where 
they  have  good  food,  good  clothes, 
leisure,  and  plenty  of  all  ?  The  de- 
tails of  this  growing  and  fearfully 
demoralizing  evil  are  vividly  por- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  41 

trayed  in  General  Booth's  "  Darkest 
England,"  Mr.  Stead's  "If  Christ 
Came  to  Chicago,"  B.  O.  Flower's 
"  Civilization's  Inferno,"  and  the  cur- 
rent articles  in  the  Arena  magazine 
and  North  American  Review.  Girls 
of  reputable  families  hired  as  clerks 
or  saleswomen  in  large  stores  or  as 
hands  in  factories,  and  receiving  but 
a  half  living  wage,  are  besieged  week 
after  week  and  day  after  day  with 
the  satanic  whispered  recommen- 
dation to  be  "courteous"  to  their 
employers  or  fellow-clerks  or  "out- 
side friend,"  and  in  this  way,  they 
are  told,  they  will  soon  be  able  to 
munificently  supplement  their  sala- 
ries. This  diabolical  persecution,  and 
their  own  poverty  and  inability  to 
keep  up  in  the  race,  much  less  improve 
their  condition,  finally,  after  a  more 
or  less  prolonged  period  of  mental 
and  physical  suffering,  combine  to 


42  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

force  a  resort  to  what  their  souls 
loath,  and  they  barter  their  chastity 
in  secret  immorality  or  in  public 
brothels.  When,  after  days  and 
even  weeks  of  hopeless,  friendless 
wandering,  they  are  finally  confronted 
with  the  alternatives  of  starvation, 
suicide,  or  shame,  is  it  any  wonder 
that  they  choose  the  last  ?  For  we 
must  remember  that  they  are  taught 
to  believe  that  the  act  of  suicide  has 
no  forgiveness  and  no  chance  of  it, 
but  that  sensuality  offers  at  least  an 
opportunity  for  repentance,  and  has 
been  known  to  obtain  forgiveness,  if 
not  of  the  Pharisees  of  society,  never- 
theless of  the  Saviour. 

They  do  not  thus  degrade  them- 
selves for  love,  nor  for  lust,  nor  even 
for  lucre ;  but  for  life.  Poverty  is 
the  causal  root  of  it.  But  this  pov- 
erty or  semi-poverty  is  but  another 
name  for  that  general  abstraction  or 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  43 

widespread  minimization  of  personal 
property  caused  by  the  unfair  and 
criminal  concentration  of  enormous 
and  abnormal  riches  in  the  hands  of 
the  few. 

Fifth,  Estrangement  of  the  masses 
from  the  Church.  This  lamentable 
paradox  is  not  to  be  accounted  for, 
as  some  would  have  us  believe,  by  the 
indifference  and  pride  of  the  church. 
In  fact  the  interest  the  large  major- 
ity of  the  churches  manifest  in  the 
amelioration  and  salvation  of  the  so- 
called  "  masses  "  costs  them  many  a 
dollar,  many  a  tear,  many  a  prayer, 
and  many  a  consecrated  life.  The 
great  burden  of  guilt,  I  feel  more  and 
more  convinced,  lies  upon  quite  dif- 
ferent shoulders.  For  the  masses 
hold  aloof  from  the  church,  not 
because  they  have  examined  her 
doctrines  and  dislike  them  ;  not 
because  they  disbelieve  in  religion  or 


44  POVER TY '  5  FA CTOB F. 

in  Christ  ;  not  because  they  do  not 
care  for  human  or  divine  love  ;  but 
simply  because  they  do  not  own 
clothes  good  enough  to  come  to 
church  and  sit  there  beside  their 
more  fortunate  brethren.  Their 
natural  human  instinct  rebels  against 
making  themselves  a  mark  for  crit- 
ical eyes  and  perhaps  unkindly  re- 
marks, issuing  from  well-dressed 
ladies  and  gentlemen  about  them  in 
the  congregation. 

But  even  if  they  have  clothes  good 
enough,  their  wages  are  not  suffi- 
cient to  enable  them  to  keep  up  their 
church  dues,  and  then,  when  they 
fall  behind,  a  keen  sense  of  mingled 
shame  and  honor  drives  them  away 
again.  Thus  they  don't  come,  not 
because  they  won't,  but  because  they 
can't.  Their  poverty  unchurches 
them. 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  misunderstood 


POVERTY1  S  FACTORY.  45 

as  maintaining  that  poverty  is  the 
only  factor  in  unchurching  the 
masses.  There  are  others,  and 
among  them  religious  indifference  is 
prime  and  mighty.  When  one  pauses 
to  contemplate  the  widespread  spirit- 
ual apathy  of  the  lower  classes,  one 
is  appalled,  and  feels  like  exclaiming 
with  Francis  Xavier  when  he  stood 
before  the  Walled  Kingdom  and  felt 
the  power  of  its  adamantine  uncon- 
cern, ' '  Oh  rock  !  rock  !  when  wilt 
thou  open  to  my  Master  ? "  We  do 
not,  then,  overlook  the  force  of  relig- 
ious unconcern  as  a  powerful  factor 
in  the  problem  before  us.  But  we 
ask  :  May  not  the  poverty  of  the 
people  have  a  direct  causal  bearing 
on  their  indifference  ?  Would  not 
you  and  I  naturally  manifest  an 
indifference  to  any  interest  which 
stands  so  far  above  the  reach  of 
our  pockets  and  position,  as  the 


46  POVERTY^  S  FACTORY. 

lower  classes  feel  in  reference  to  the 
church  ?  "The  simple  fact  which 
we  have  to  face  to-day  is  this,"  says 
Prof.  Francis  G.  Peabody,  "that  the 
working  classes  have,  as  a  rule, 
practically  abandoned  the  churches 
and  left  them  to  be  the  resorts  of  the 
prosperous." 

A  poor  member  of  my  church 
whom  I  observed  timidly  enter  and 
seek  out  the  remotest  seat  on  the 
gallery,  said  to  me  afterwards,  "Oh, 
pastor,  I  wanted  to  come  to  the 
Communion  Table  last  Sunday,  but 
was  really  ashamed  of  my  clothes." 
I  looked  at  his  clothes.  My  mouth 
was  mute.  Another  said  to  me  when 
I  pressed  him  for  his  reason  for  non- 
attendance,  ' '  I  am  ashamed  to  come 
to  church  when  I  know  I  owe  dues. 
But  indeed  I  must  first  feed  and 
clothe  my  children  and  pay  the  house 
rent."  I  thought  exactly  as  he  did, 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  47 

and  could  simply  assure  him  of  a 
warm  welcome,  whether  his  dues 
were  paid  or  not.  These  men  were 
not  mere  excuse-makers.  They  were 
sincere.  Their  past  records  show 
that. 

This  is  pitiful  and  pathetic,  and  I 
for  one  cannot  find  it  in  my  heart  to 
condemn  them,  and  methinks  I  hear 
the  echo  of  the  Saviour's  words, 
' '  Neither  do  I  condemn  them. "  The 
Saviour  said,  "  Blessed  are  the  poor 
in  spirit,"  but  He  never  said, "  Blessed 
are  the  poor  in  cash,"  and  it  is  this 
kind  of  poverty,  financial  poverty, 
which  is  the  chief  and  potent  factor 
in  estranging  the  masses  from  the 
church  to-day.  And  back  of  this 
widespread  poverty,  as  its  main  cause, 
lies  the  omnivorous  monopoly  of  enor- 
mous and  abnormal  wealth.  Many 
of  these  multi-millionaires  do  not  en- 
ter the  church  themselves,  and  they 


48  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

unwittingly  keep  out  many  that 
would  enter.  A  more  equitable  dis- 
tribution of  wealth  would  fill  our 
churches  to  overflowing  with  a  happy, 
devout,  and  sympathetic  people. 

Might  it  be  true,  therefore,  that 
the  church  to-day,  as  it  gathers  its 
cultured  and  well-to-do  members, 
Sunday  after  Sunday,  to  enjoy  its 
solemn  services  and  reap  the  bene- 
fits, while  it  neglects  to  attack  with 
the  power  of  God  the  oppressors  and 
the  wickedness  in  the  high  places, 
may  be  tithing  mint  and  anise 
and  cummin,  but  leaving  undone 
the  weightier  matters  of  the  law, 
among  which  Jesus  Christ  Himself 
placed  judgment  prime  ?  (Mat.  23  : 
23).  Is  it  probable  that  the  church 
to-day  can  be  charged  with  that  form 
of  selfish  dereliction  of  solemn  duty 
against  which  the  inspired  thunders 
of  the  son  of  Amoz  were  hurled  in 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  49 

his  generation  ?  "  Bring  no  more 
vain  oblations  ;  incense  is  an  abomi- 
nation to  me  ;  new  moon  and  Sab- 
bath, the  calling  of  assemblies ;  it  is 
iniquity,  even  the  solemn  meeting; 
for  when  ye  spread  forth  your  hands, 
I  will  hide  mine  eyes  from  you  ;  yea, 
when  ye  make  many  prayers  I  will 
not  hear  ;  cease  to  do  evil  ;  learn  to 
do  well ;  seek  judgment ;  relieve  the 
oppressed  "  (or,  as  it  is  better  trans- 
lated, "  set  right  the  oppressor  "), 
"  judge  the  fatherless,  plead  for 
the  widow."  It  is  sad  indeed  that 
scientific  and  impartial  observers  are 
compelled  to  say  that  "  the  working 
classes  have,  as  a  rule,  practically 
abandoned  the  churches  and  left 
them  to  be  the  resorts  of  the  pros- 
perous." 

Sixth,  Dishonesty  and  Fraud.  The 
omnipresence  of  this  subtle  and  per- 
vasive sin  in  almost  every  avenue  of 
4 


50  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

modern  activity  is  one  of  the  most 
startling  and  ominous  signs  of  the 
times,  and  one  of  the  direct  curses 
of  the  amassing  of  enormous  and 
abnormal  wealth,  which,  as  before 
shown,  can  be  done  only  by  methods 
that  will  not,  squeeze  them  as  you 
may,  quadrate  with  strict  justice, 
much  less  with  Christian  righteous- 
ness. False  ideals  are  honored  and 
aimed  at  to-day.  Money  kings  and 
plutocrats  are  the  beau-ideals  of  our 
youth,  and  a  young  man,  soon  find 
ing  that  wealth  is  the  royal  road  to 
applause,  power,  and  position,  strains 
every  nerve,  ruins  health,  resorts  to 
any  means,  foul  or  fair,  to  win  the 
golden  meed  and  buy  entrance  into 
the  second  or  third  economic  heaven 
and  the  charmed  society  of  pluto- 
cratic demigods.  The  most  startling 
and  discouraging  feature  about  the 
whole  situation  is,  not  that  legislative 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  51 

and  financial  juggling  is  on  the  in- 
crease, but  that  the  public  conscience 
in  reference  to  it  is  slowly  but  surely 
losing  its  edge,  and  that  public  opin- 
ion, at  least  a  very,  very  large  por- 
tion of  it  otherwise  honorable,  is 
not  only  conniving  at  successful  dis- 
honesty and  indirect  theft,  but  is 
actually  honoring  and  rewarding  it. 
Who  or  what  force  is  mainly  respon- 
sible for  this  alarming  prostitution 
of  the  public  conscience  ?  I  think 
the  answer  is  plain,  viz.,  none  other 
than  the  almost  worshipped  mono- 
polists of  enormous  and  abnormal 
wealth,  who  are  powerful  enough 
to  snap  their  fingers  in  scornful  in- 
difference at  the  rest  of  us  and  say, 
"  What  are  you  going  to  do  about 
it?" 

Most  pertinently  does  Herbert 
Spencer  say :  "  When  that  abhor- 
rence which  society  now  shows  to 


52  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

direct  theft  is  shown  to  theft  of  all 
degrees  of  indirectness;  when  wealth 
obtained  by  illegitimate  means  in- 
variably brings  nothing  but  disgrace  ; 
then  may  we  be  sure  that  the  morals 
of  trade  will  be  greatly  purified,  and 
mercantile  vices  disappear."  But, 
alas  !  to-day  the  money  king  of  ab- 
normal wealth  is  not  only  the  ideal 
but  the  idol,  pet  and  precious,  to  the 
heart  of  every  ambitious  American 
youth.  The  days  of  mythology, 
heathen  altars,  and  human  sacrifices 
have  not  all  passed  by. 

Seventh,  The  Decline  of  Patriot- 
ism. The  ground  of  patriotism  is 
the  ground.  The  soul  of  patriotism 
is  the  soil.  The  life  of  patriotism  is 
the  land.  On  land  a  man  builds  his 
home,  erects  his  factory  and  store, 
and  from  land  he  reaps  his  harvest. 
Once  rob  any  man  of  this  funda- 
mental possession  or  its  equivalent, 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  53 

and  the  only  point  of  attachment  be- 
tween him  and  his  country  instantly 
ceases,  and  he  becomes  either  a  tramp 
or  a  foreigner.  What  love  will  such 
a  man  or  class  of  men  have  for  their 
country  which  permits  them  to  be 
thus  robbed  of  natural  rights,  and 
allows  this  refined  cruelty  and  crime 
under  the  sacred  name  of  law  ?  But 
the  startling  fact  is  that  in  these 
United  States,  as  was  quite  recently 
shown  in  the  arguments  before  the 
Supreme  Court  in  reference  to  the 
constitutionality  of  the  Income  Tax, 
2  per  cent  of  the  total  population 
owns  90  per  cent  of  the  total  taxable 
property  !  leaving  only  10  per  cent 
of  the  property  in  the  hands  of  98 
per  cent  of  the  population  ! 

Is  it  amazing  that  large  bodies  of 
people  who  live  in  habitations  in  the 
like  of  which  a  rich  man  would 
scarce  compel  his  pet  dog  to  dwell ; 


54  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

that  fathers  and  mothers  with  fami- 
lies who  stay  in  so-called  homes  and 
have  such  a  precarious  hold  upon 
them  that  the  slightest  misfortune 
causes  the  landlord  to  evict  them  ; 
that  men  and  women  who  have  no 
homes  at  all  except  shelters  which 
chance  or  charity  offers  them  ; — is  it 
amazing,  I  ask,  that  such  patient 
victims  of  a  vicious  system  should  at 
last  begin  to  cool  off  somewhat  in 
their  patriotic  enthusiasm  for  the 
land  that  fosters  it,  a  land  which 
they  are  farcically  taught  to  ' '  fondly 
call  their  own,"  and  for  which  they 
are  told  it  is  their  duty  in  times  of 
peril  to  fight  or  to  die  ?  Shall  true 
sons  of  America  be  called  unpatriotic 
ingrates  and  other  hard  names  when 
they  complain  of  their  government 
permitting  5,500,000  acres,  or  ^7  of 
our  entire  acreage,  to  be  fenced  off 
from  their  use  and  held  for  mere 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  55 

purposes  of  speculation  by  a  foreign 
syndicate  with  headquarters  in  Lon- 
don ?  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  long- 
suffering  and  practically  expatriated 
people,  oppressed  by  the  power  of 
enormous  and  abnormal  wealth, 
driven  away  from  the  soil,  or  nailed 
down  to  it  as  slaves,  by  soulless 
syndicates  and  selfish  speculators, 
should  at  last  begin  to  feel  the  fires 
of  patriotism  dying  out  in  their 
hearts,  and  should  sing,  with  feebler 
and  still  feebler  ring, 

"  I  love  thy  rocks  and  rills, 
Thy  woods  and  templed  hills  ; 
My  heart  with  rapture  thrills  ! " 

Oh  !  it's  a  lie  !  And  yet  the  poor 
things  sing  every  fourth  of  July  and 
Memorial  day  ! 

"Men  of  Rome,"  cried  Tiberius 
Gracchus  centuries  ago,  "you  are 
called  the  lords  of  the  world,  yet  you 
hold  not  a  square  foot  of  its  soil  ! 


56  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

The  wild  beasts  have  their  dens,  but 
the  soldiers  of  Italy  have  only  water 
and  air ! " 

Eighth,  The  Breaking  Down  of 
Home  Life.  This  perhaps  is  one  of 
the  saddest  of  the  signs  of  the  truth. 
The  home  is  gradually  being  sup- 
planted by  the  club,  saloon,  low 
theatre,  and  beer-garden. 

In  the  first  place  the  very  rich 
man  is  so  preoccupied  with  the  in- 
numerable concerns  of  his  enormous 
investments,  enterprises,  specula- 
tions, and  risks,  that  his  perplexed 
and  active  mind  is  little  disposed  to 
enjoy  the  amenities  of  home  life  ;  or, 
if  he  is  desirous  of  doing  this,  he  has 
precious  little  time  left  for  it;  no. 
time  for  wife  and  children.  Instead, 
he  hies  him  to  his  Metropolitan, 
Union  League,  or  fashionable  Lotos 
Club,  where  he  can  continue  to  dis- 
cuss business  interests  with  fellow 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  57 

business  men,  at  least  if  he  wants  to. 
The  wife  and  mother  has  numerous 
social  engagements  :  dances,  charity 
balls,  assemblies,  teas,  receptions, 
etc.,  etc.  ;  and  they  are  now  organ- 
izing women's  clubs  to  compete, 
counteract,  or  offset  the  men's  clubs  ; 
so  that  the  care  and  training  of  the 
children  is  almost  if  not  entirely 
handed  over  to  well-paid  nurses, 
governesses,  tutors,  and  art  teachers. 
The  children  of  the  rich  often  grow 
to  love  nurse  or  governess  more 
than  mother  or  father.  Thus  the 
home  becomes  simply  a  house  where 
the  elders  meet  to  eat,  sleep,  and 
snarl.  They  have  magnificent 
houses,  but  not  magnificent  homes. 
On  the  other  hand  the  poor  are 
not  able  to  furnish  a  home,  and  to 
render  it  attractive  with  comfort- 
able furniture,  games  and  play- 
things for  the  children,  papers  and 


58  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

illustrated  magazines,  musical  in- 
struments and  teachers  for  the  same. 
Consequently  the  father  and  hus- 
band spends  his  leisure  moments  and 
evenings  in  the  well- furnished  apart- 
ments of  his  secret  order  or  the 
saloon,  while  their  sons  follow  their 
example,  and,  chipping  together, 
organize  a  "Wild  Duck,"  "Ivy 
Leaf,"  or  "  Hell  Club,"  where  they 
waste  their  time,  talents,  and  soul  on 
cards,  pool,  gambling,  Police  Ga- 
zettes, dime  novels,  and  beer,  and 
where  they  graduate  with  honor  in 
the  arts  of  cursing,  swearing,  and 
fighting.  The  poor  have  miserable 
houses  and  miserable  homes. 

Thus  extreme  wealth  and  extreme 
poverty  tend  to  disintegrate  the  home. 
Extremes  are  pernicious.  "  Ne  quid 
nimis"  cried  the  Latin  philosopher, 
"Not  anything  too  much."  "Give 
me  neither  riches  nor  poverty," 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  59 

solemnly  and  thoughtfully  said  the 
wise  man  of  old.  In  fact,  it  is  only 
in  the  middle-classes  that  many  real 
homes  are  to  be  found,  homes  of 
the  Washington  and  Lincoln  type, 
cheery,  happy  paradises  on  the  earth, 
homes  where  old  and  young  mingle 
in  evening  pastimes,  in  reading,  in 
sympathy,  all  gathered  around  a 
central  table  or  a  glowing  hearth, 
homes  such  as  inspired  the  chaste 
and  classical  pen  of  Washington 
Irving.  But  alas  !  the  club  poison  is 
invading  even  these  sacred  circles  ; 
for  many  of  the  middle-classes  are 
commencing  to  mimic  the  wealthy 
and  the  aristocratic,  and  the  club 
craze  is  converting  scores  of  hitherto 
tender  and  sound  home-lovers  into 
clubomaniacs. 

Query.  Does  not  this  splitting  up 
of  the  home  circle,  this  segmenting 
of  one  of  the  most  sacred  of  God's 


60  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

institutions,  and  this  substituting  for 
it  of  an  artificial  man-made  com- 
munion, largely  explain  that  sad  and 
startling  paradox,  viz.,  the  growing 
indifference  of  parents  for  their  chil- 
dren's spiritual  and  mental  interests  ? 
This  parental  apathy  is  something 
grossly  unnatural  and  really  astound- 
ing. But  when  children  and  parents 
walk  in  diverse  paths  and  take  their 
chief  pleasure  each  in  their  respective 
clubs  and  separate  orders,  and  the 
community  of  interests,  pastimes, 
sympathy,  and  joy  which  the  word 
"home"  enshrines  is  thus  nullified  and 
dissipated,  what  else  can  be  expected 
but  the  sad  denouement  of  indiffer- 
ence alluded  to  above  ?  This  is, 
therefore,  one  of  those  indirect  and 
remote  curses  consequent  upon  the 
monopoly  of  enormous  and  abnormal 
wealth  resident  in  the  gilt  hands  of 
the  few. 


PO  VEB TY '  8  FACTOR  Y.  61 


CHAPTER  HI. 

OBJECTIONS. 

IT  has  been  said  in  justification 
of  enormous  wealth  that  it  is  not 
hoarded  but  invested,  and  thus  gives 
employment  to  thousands  of  people. 
This  is  true.  An  investing  million- 
aire is  infinitely  to  be  preferred  to  a 
miser.  Having  tricked  the  people 
into  poverty  and  dependence  through 
the  agency  of  class  legislation,  as  we 
shall  clearly  see  later  on,  it  would  be 
an  unutterably  hellish  crime  for  the 
enormously  wealthy  to  horde  their 
ill-gotten  gains.  An  investing  mil- 
lionaire is,  therefore,  infinitely  to  be 
preferred  to  a  miser.  He  makes 


62  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

some  return  to  the  victims  whose 
lamb-like  non-resistance  to  injustice 
and  imposition  has  enabled  him  to 
batten  financially. 

But  is  anyone  so  blind  as  not  to 
see  that  the  increment  or  profit  made 
from  these  gigantic  investments 
flows  continually  into  the  pocket  of 
the  money-king,  whilst  the  laborers 
who  helped  to  produce  it  for  him  do 
not  share  it,  but  are  nailed  down  to  a 
fixed  wage,  which  does  not,  except  in 
rare  cases,  increase  with  the  profits 
or  in  any  just  proportion  to  them  ? 
On  the  other  hand,  if  the  enterprise 
threatens  to  prove  disastrous,  the 
laborers  must  suffer  first,  whilst 
the  money-king  saves  himself  by 
resorting  to  one  or  more  of  the  four 
following  alternatives  :  he  discharges 
a  certain  number  of  his  employees  ; 
or  runs  on  half  time  ;  or  reduces 
wages  for  all ;  or  shuts  down  alto- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  63 

gether  during  periods  of  depression, 
just  when  the  wage- earner  can  least 
afford  idleness.  Thus,  whatever  be- 
tide, the  advantage  lies  on  the  side 
of  the  capitalist,  for  he  holds  the 
reins  and  whip,  and  can  drive  as  he 
pleases,  unless  he  gets  holds  of  a 
refractory  horse.  But  even  this 
dilemma  will  cause  him  more  annoy- 
ance and  unwelcome  criticism  than 
actual  financial  loss,  although  of 
course  it  entails  a  degree  of  the 
latter  too,  but  an  incomparably  far 
less  degree  than  the  poor  stubborn 
animal  entails  upon  himself. 

Henry  Wood,  in  a  chapter  on  "  The 
Unequal  Distribution  of  Wealth," 
says,  "  Every  laborer  gets  as  much 
as  if  the  property  (or  business) 
belonged  to  ten  thousand  stock- 
holders instead  of  largely  to  one." 
True.  But  although  it  makes  no  dif- 
ference in  the  amount  of  the  wage,  it 


64  POVERTY' 8  FACTORY. 

does  make  a  great  difference  in  many 
other  respects,  the  same  difference 
indeed  which  exists  between  a  mon- 
archy and  a  democracy,  and  which 
works  itself  out  in  countless  chan- 
nels, great  and  small.  A  mon- 
archy is  the  best  form  of  govern- 
ment, provided  the  monarch  be  con- 
scientious and  public-spirited  ;  but  if 
he  is  not,  it  is  the  worst.  All  things 
considered,  therefore,  we  hold  that 
the  democratic  or  republican  form  of 
government  is  preferable.  So  in  busi- 
ness. The  more  thoroughly  demo- 
cratic it  can  be  made,  i.e.,  the  more 
completely  every  human  unit  can 
be  made  financially  interested  and 
placed  under  responsibility,  the  more 
nearly  ideal  and  perfect  the  balance 
and  equipoise  of  results.  If,  there- 
fore, the  profits  are  divided  among 
ten  thousand  stockholders  instead  of 
monopolized  by  one,  this  is  a  great 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  65 

step  toward  the  ideal  method  of  con- 
ducting business,  which  we  are  com- 
ing more  and  more  clearly  to  see  is 
that  form  of  co-operation  called  profit 
and  loss  sharing,  or  some  modifica- 
tion or  adjustment  of  it.  Further- 
more, the  distribution  of  the  profits 
among  ten  thousand  stockholders 
minimizes  the  financial  and  conse- 
quently also,  to  a  large  degree,  the 
educational  and  social  disparity  be- 
tween them  and  the  wage-earners  ; 
whereas  the  absorption  of  those  ten 
thousand  stockholders  in  the  person 
of  one  would  but  accentuate  this 
disparity,  kill  brotherhood,  and  even- 
tually produce  that  enormous  and 
abnormal  inequity  which  is  the  hot- 
bed of  the  vices  and  evils  briefly 
portrayed  in  preceding  paragraphs. 

It  will  not  be  inapropos   at    this 
point  to  glance  at  the  central  tenet 
of  modern  Socialism,  which  is  thus 
5 


66  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

stated:  "  All  wealth  is  created  by 
labor,  and,  therefore,  belongs  to  the 
laborers  who  have  produced  it. "  This 
proposition  is  positively  impregnable. 
It  is  sound  and  logical.  But  every- 
thing depends  upon  its  interpretation. 
The  Socialists  mean  muscular  or 
manual  labor.  They  seem  to  know 
nothing  of  mental  labor.  They  ignore 
the  mind  altogether.  And  yet  the 
mental  labor  required  in  the  joint 
production  of  wealth  is  as  great  and 
valuable,  aye,  by  natural  law,  greater 
and  more  valuable,  than  the  physical. 
Is  not  the  marble  statue  far  more 
the  production  of  the  artist  who 
creates  and  directs,  than  of  the 
artizans  who  handle  the  chisel,  ths 
mall,  and  the  sandpaper  ?  Power's 
"Greek  Slave"  is  Power's.  Is  not 
the  finished  edifice  as  much  the  work 
of  the  architect  as  of  the  contractor, 
the  mason,  and  the  carpenter  ?  Does 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  67 

not  the  capitalist  who  invests  his 
money  in  an  enterprise,  plans  the 
details  of  the  business,  passes  anxious, 
sleepless  nights  in  thought,  telegraphs 
to  distant  points,  watches  the  fluctu- 
ations of  the  market,  studies  hard 
in  order  to  calculate  the  effect  of 
changes  in  statute  laws,  takes  account 
of  new  inventions,  deals  with  com- 
petitors, prepares  for  seasons  of  de- 
pression, at  such  times  tries  to  devise 
plans  to  run  his  business  in  order  to 
keep  the  machinery  from  rusting  and 
give  his  men  work,  etc. ,  do  far  more 
real  life- wearing  labor  than  the  men 
who  come  regularly  to  work  ?  And 
for  employees,  on  account  of  a  neces- 
sary slight  reduction  in  wages  during 
hard  times,  or  to  gratify  the  vanity 
and  pseudo-wisdom  of  walking  dele- 
gates, or  from  sympathy  with  in- 
jured men  under  other  employers' 
control,  to  rebel  and  strike  against  a 


68  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

firm  or  a  man  who  thus  worries  and 
works  in  order,  among  other  reasons, 
to  provide  them  with  work,  is  in- 
gratitude and  stupidity  of  so  pro- 
nounced and  deep  a  dye  as  to  richly 
merit  the  profoundest  condemnation 
of  all  sensible  citizens. 

Henry  Wood  pertinently  asks, 
"Does  not  a  student,  clergyman, 
merchant,  or  an  inventor  labor  ?  On 
the  supposition  that  wealth  is  the 
product  of  physical  labor  only,- some 
machines  would  have  a  very  large 
value  as  measured  by  man  power." 
The  Socialists,  therefore,  are  ex- 
tremely one-sided.  If  Socialistic  one- 
sidedness  were  to  prevail  it  would  in- 
evitably work  itself  out  in  class  legis- 
lation and  eventually  produce  a  set 
of  men  as  abnormally  and  enormously 
wealthy  as  another  set  is  now.  Cur- 
rent Socialism  is  not  the  cure  for 
current  evils. 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  69 


CHAPTER  IV. 

INEFFECTIVE    CURES. 

WE  pass  on  now  to  search  for  the 
true  remedy.  By  a  process  of  ab- 
straction I  think  we  shall  exhaust  the 
list  of  proposed  cures,  and  be  led  very 
close  to  the  true  one,  or  the  most 
practical  remedy  for  the  crying  evils 
before  enumerated.  First,  then,  let 
us  briefly  review  the  ineffective  cures 
that  have  been  proposed,  tried,  and 
have  failed. 

All  through  the  century-long  his- 
tory of  labor  troubles  (for  these, 
alas  !  are  nothing  new  or  unique), 
resort  has  been  had  to, 


70  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

1ST,  THE   STRIKE 

as  a  means  of  redress  and  of  compel- 
ling a  more  equitable  distribution  of 
wealth.  The  history  of  strikes  is  a 
chronicle  of  failures.  From  the  first 
one  on  record,  which,  Livy  tell  us, 
broke  out  310  B.  c.  among  the  flute- 
players  at  the  public  sacrifices  ;  from 
the  first  one  in  this  country,  which 
occurred  among  the  sailors  of  New 
York  in  1803,  on  down  to  the  great 
strikes  of  the  year  last  past  ;  only  an 
infinitesimal  number  of  the  long  and 
dreary  list  were  successful.  And  of 
all  the  follies  of  foolish  men  the  "  sym- 
pathetic strike  "  foots  the  class  as  the 
grandest  booby  of  all.  The  strike 
has  not  only  been  a  failure,  but  it  has 
always  recoiled  with  double  force 
upon  the  strikers  themselves.  The 
strike  is  an  industrial  boomerang. 
Strikers  hurt  themselves  more  than 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  71 

anybody  else,  and  what  is  far  worse, 
damage  their  own  cause  by  their  ex- 
cesses, even  when  that  cause  is  just 
and  right.  If,  as  Henry  George 
says,  the  strike  is  the  "  necessary 
weapon"  of  trades  unions,  they  had 
better  bury  it  out  of  sight.  And  in 
fact  this  is  what  they  are  actually 
preparing  to  do.  All  persons  will 
rejoice  to  observe  that  the  laborers 
themselves  are  wakening  up  to  the 
consciousness  that  the  strike  is  not 
only  ineffective  but  positively  detri- 
mental. At  the  national  convention 
of  Mine  Workers  held  last  February 
the  following  resolution  was  adopted, 
which  I  give  verbatim,  "Resolved, 
that  strikes  have  proven  failures." 

And  yet  there  is  a  pathos  about  the 
strike.  Men  instinctively  and  plainly 
feel  some  wrong  done  them,  and 
blindly  "strike"  to  redress  it.  I 
must  therefore  reluctantly  disagree 


72  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

with  so  high  an  authority  as  Lord 
Macaulay,  who  says,  in  reference  to 
this  subject :  "  A  little  turbulence  is, 
as  it  were,  the  rainbow  of  the  state  ; 
it  shows  indeed  that  there  is  a  pass- 
ing shower ;  but  it  is  a  pledge  that 
there  shall  be  no  deluge."  I  cannot 
see  the  beauty  of  the  rainbow  in  the 
turbulence,  lawlessness,  and  losses  of 
property  and  human  life  which  are 
coming  to  be  the  common  accompa- 
niments of  strikes,  and  I  cannot  look 
upon  them  as  pledges  of  future  peace. 
I  rather  believe  they  are  just  the  re- 
verse, viz. ,  the  chills  of  economic 
fever,  the  premonitory  spasms  of 
delirium  and  revolutionary  madness. 
I  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to 
state  here  that  there  is  one  character- 
istic about  strikers  which  I  have  often 
admired,  and  that  is  their  courage. 
It  takes  courage  for  men  to  stake 
their  all  and  face  the  powerful  op- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  73 

ponent  which  strikers  have  to  face. 
You  may  not  choose  to  call  it  cour- 
age ;  you  may  prefer  to  club  it  igno- 
rance, foolhardiness,  audacity.  But 
by  whatever  name  the  moral  quality 
be  known,  to  me  the  spectacle  of  men, 
whether  ignorant  or  educated,  risk- 
ing their  very  bread  and  meat,  jeop- 
ardizing their  home  and  happiness 
and  that  of  helpless  wives  and  chil- 
dren, in  a  struggle  to  throw  off  the 
wrongs  they  feel,  whether  real  or 
fancied,  is  courageous  and  heroic, 
especially  when  the  poor  things  have 
nothing  but  failure  to  hope  for. 
Keen  indeed  must  be  the  privations, 
the  injustice,  and  the  oppression  that 
compel  it. 

I  am  not  alone  in  this  opinion.  So 
high  an  authority  as  Mr.  Clarence  S. 
Darrow,  who  argued  before  the  Su- 
preme Court  the  contempt  case  of  the 
A.  R.  U.,  said,  in  reference  even  to 


74  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

sympathetic  strikes  :  "  When  100,000 
men  lay  down  the  tools  of  their  trade, 
not  because  any  right  of  their  own 
has  been  invaded  or  is  in  peril,  but 
simply  because  of  their  fellow- work- 
men, we  have  no  right  to  say  that 
they  are  criminals  for  that.  We  may 
not  be  able  to  put  ourselves  in  their 
places.  If  we  could  we  might  feel 
far  differently  in  regard  to  their  ac- 
tions ;  but  let  us  not  condemn  them 
who  act  from  the  highest  and  holiest 
motives,"  viz.,  to  support  and  encour- 
age their  brethren,  whom  they  deem 
to  be  wronged  by  a  power  greater 
than  they. 

But  though  in  this  sense  heroic,  it 
is  all  misguided  and  foolish,  and  for 
it  walking  delegates  are  largely,  very 
largely,  responsible.  It  is  these  con- 
temptible fellows  who  very  frequent- 
ly are  the  sole  factors  or  agents  in 
making  the  men  restless  and  firing 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  75 

them  to  strike,  often  when  there  is 
not  the  shadow  of  a  justifiable  reason 
for  it  whatever.  But  these  delegates 
must  do  something  to  keep  things 
moving  and  induce  the  men  to  believe 
they  are  of  service  sufficient  to  war- 
rant the  continuance  of  their  salaries. 
And  so  the  men  strike,  first,  simply 
to  eke  revenge  out  of  their  supposed 
enemy  by  embarrassing  his  business 
as  much  as  possible  ;  secondly,  to 
make  a  self-flattering  display  of  their 
own  power,  which  they  like  to  see 
simply  to  prove  to  themselves  that 
they  still  possess  it  ;  and  thirdly,  of 
course,  decoyed  by  the  ignis  fatuus 
of  possible  success.  Such  groundless 
and  senseless  strikes  have  all,  with- 
out a  single  exception,  proved  miser- 
able failures,  as  they  richly  deserved. 
Thus  the  whole  system  of  strikes, 
justifiable  and  otherwise,  is  a  pro- 
digious failure,  and  simply  because 


76  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

it  is  a  misguided  effort.  But  if  ever 
the  flood-gates  of  war  are  to  be 
opened,  the  bolts  will  doubtless  be 
drawn  by  some  monster  strike  or 
popular  insurrection  of  the  Wat 
Tyler  type.  Sings  Longfellow  in 
prophetic  and  mournful  strain  : 

"  There  is  a  poor  blind  Samson  in  our  land, 
Shorn  of  his  strength  and  bound  with  bonds 

of  steel, 

Who  may  in  some  grim  revel  raise  his  head 
And  shake  the  pillars  of  the  commonweal." 

2DLY,   ARBITRATION 

has  failed.  When  our  millionaires 
and  corporations  insist  that  they  have 
nothing  to  arbitrate,  and  when 
workmen  and  trades  unionists  enter 
the  convention  hall  predetermined 
not  to  recede  from  certain  fixed  de- 
mands, the  unfortunate  arbitrators 
are  rendered  absolutely  powerless  to 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  77 

win  mutual  concessions  or  effect  a 
satisfactory  compromise. 

Compulsory  arbitration  is  out  of 
the  question.  The  very  terms  are 
contradictory.  We  agree  heartily 
with  what  the  New  York  Independent 
said  last  year  :  "  Compulsory  arbitra- 
tion is  not  to  be  thought  of.  It  would 
imply  an  invasion  of  the  rights  of 
both  capital  and  labor.  It  goes  on 
the  assumption  that  workmen  have 
a  right  to  insist  on  employment, 
and  that  owners  have  a  right  to 
insist  on  service.  Capital  must  be 
free  to  employ  labor  on  the  best 
terms  it  can  make ;  labor  must 
be  free  to  engage  itself  where  it  can 
get  the  best  rates.  Labor  must  be 
free  ;  capital  must  be  free.  If  the 
problem  raised  by  strikes  is  solved  it 
must  be  done  on  the  basis  of  liberty." 
The  terms  of  settlement  of  the  recent 
great  strike  in  the  boot  and  shoe 


78  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

trade  in  England  include  a  feature 
which  is  not  unworthy  of  careful 
study.  The  settlement  provides 
financial  guarantees  for  carrying  out 
the  terms  of  the  agreement,  and  both 
parties  have  agreed  to  forfeit  a  sub- 
stantial sum  if  either  party  breaks 
the  compact.  But  this  is  a  very 
different  thing  from  the  compulsory 
arbitration  schemes  so  strongly 
championed  by  some  American 
writers. 

3DLY,    CONCILIATION 

has  failed.  Arbitration  requires 
three  parties,  conciliation  two.  It  is 
an  effort  on  the  part  of  capital  and 
labor  to  adjust  a  satisfactory  modus 
vivendi,  or  distribution  of  earned 
increments,  without  the  intervention 
of  a  mediator.  Conciliation  has 
miserably  failed.  The  distrust  and 
animosity  between  the  two  parties, 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  79 

who  ought  to  be  brothers,  has  in- 
creased rather  than  decreased.  The 
house  of  industry  is  divided  against 
itself.  The  day  of  conciliation  has 
gone  by.  The  force  of  law  or  the 
law  of  force  seem  to  be  the  only 
alternatives  of  the  future.  For 

4THLY,    CO-OPERATION 

has  failed.  Productive  co-operation 
has  been  practically  abandoned, 
chiefly,  it  seems,  because  the  asso- 
ciated workmen  could  not  find  or 
failed  to  elect  experienced  and  effi- 
cient men  to  superintend  the  busi- 
ness. Distributive  co-operation  has 
had  a  similar  history  and  fate.  The 
third  form  of  co-operation  known  as 
profit-and-loss-sharing  has  been  more 
successful.  In  fact  in  almost  every 
case  (49  in  France,  12  in  Switzerland, 
at  least  10  in  America,  etc.)  where  it 


80  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

has  been  impartially  tried,  it  has  met 
with  flattering  success,  and  it  seems 
to  bear  promise  of  greater  blessings 
to  come.  Ideally,  it  approximates 
perfection.  But  it  has  failed  to  ease 
the  general  situation  simply  for  lack 
of  general  adoption  and  trial ;  and 
this  has  not  been  done  because  both 
parties  lack  courage  to  try  new 
ventures,  confidence  in  each  other, 
and  information  as  to  the  practical 
details  of  the  scheme. 

Strikes,  arbitration,  conciliation, 
co-operation  all  have  failed  to  effect 
a  more  equitable  distribution  of 
wealth.  Where  then  shall  the  true 
remedy  be  sought  ?  Physicians  tell 
us  that  the  first  important  step  in 
preparing  to  prescribe  for  a  disease 
consists  in  correctly  diagnosing  the 
nature  and  cause  of  it.  What  then 
is  the  underlying  cause  of  the  in- 
equalities obtaining  to-day  ? 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  81 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   CAUSE. 

•  Is  the  hidden  virus  discoverable  ? 
We  are  not  alone  in  thinking  that  it 
is.  The  fact  is  it  has  been  practically 
discovered  already,  and  the  great 
work  now  is  to  get  all  voters  and 
citizens  to  see  it. 

We  have  before  alluded  to  the  bale- 
ful curses  of  enormous  and  abnormal 
wealth.  But  whilst  this  great  evil 
is  the  fountain  from  which  flow  the 
other  evils  mentioned,  nevertheless 
there  lies  hidden  a  still  deeper  source 
for  it.  Abnormal  wealth  is  itself  the 
effect  of  an  underlying  cause  ;  is  the 
natural  product  of  antecedent  forces, 


82  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

And  that  ultimate  traceable  causal 
force  is  the  dark  nexus  of 

UNJUST  LAWS 

existing  in  this  country  at  the 
present  time.  It  becomes  our  duty 
to  specify.  This  unfortunately  is 
not  difficult  to  do. 

First.  There  obtains  a  rule  in  our 
Senate  which  does  not  permit  the 
previous  question  to  be  called.  The 
majority  in  consequence  is  rendered 
powerless  to  bring  the  purely  ob- 
structive tactics  of  the  minority  to 
an  end,  so  that  a  mere  handful  of 
unscrupulous  filibusters  are  clothed 
with  the  tremendous  power  of  delay- 
ing and,  as  has  been  time  and  again 
proved,  of  defeating  the  best  and 
most  necessary  legislation.  Witness 
the  notorious  example  in  the  recent 
financial  depression  when  the  passage 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  83 

of  remedial  legislation  proposed  by 
the  president,  endorsed  by  Secretary 
Carlisle,  and  approved  by  congress 
and  the  best  business  judgment  of  the 
country,  was  blocked  for  so  long  and 
anxious  a  period,  and  eventually  de- 
feated by  Senators  Wolcott,  Peffer, 
Vest,  and  Gorman,  by  employing  the 
force  concentrated  in  this  noxious 
and  plainly  unjust  rule  of  the  Senate. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  rea- 
sons for  the  origin  of  this  rule  in  the 
early  history  of  the  country,  they  are 
certainly  invalid  now.  It  is  not  a 
marvel  then  that  the  editor  of  the 
Philadelphia  Ledger  calls  that  "  rule 
of  courtesy"  a  "piece  of  supreme 
folly  and  public  wrong."  Long  ago 
it  ought  to  have  been  relegated  to 
the  category  and  catafalque  of  the 
obsolete  and  the  useless. 

With  so  pernicious  a  parliamentary 
technicality  still  in  force,  the  will  of 


84  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

the  many  will  not  cease  in  the  future 
to  be  baffled  by  the  selfish  or  obstinate 
few,  and  general  contentment  and 
prosperity  be  rendered  as  uncertain 
and  problematical  as  ever.  I  am  not 
surprised,  therefore,  to  hear  the  cry 
"Away  with  the  Senate!  Abolish 
the  Upper  House  !  "  It  is  not  merely 
an  echo  of  the  transatlantic  cry, 
"  Away  with  the  House  of  Lords  !  " 
but  arises  naturally  from  existing 
circumstances  on  this  side  of  the 
water.  W.  D.  McCrackan  does  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  "  The  very  smart- 
ness of  our  House  of  Eepresentatives 
and  the  much  vaunted  respectability 
of  our  Senate  seem  empty  shams, 
unfit  for  freemen  to  acknowledge, 
much  less  to  admire.  For  it  is  only 
in  uncertain  accents  and  with  falter- 
ing purpose  that  the  will  of  the  sov- 
ereign people  is  made  known  in  those 
imposing  but  deceptive  bodies." 


POVERTY^S  FACTORY.  85 

Secondly,  TJie  failure  to  enforce 
a  uniform  observance  or  permit  a 
uniform  non-observance  of  the  Sab- 
bath laws  is  patent  injustice,  entail- 
ing galling  inequalities  in  privilege, 
and  consequently  also  in  profit  and 
pleasure.  Why  2,000,000  citizens 
should  be  bound  in  industrial  slavery 
and  be  given  no  rest-day,  while  the 
tens  of  millions  are  free  to  enjoy 
their  Sundays  as  they  may,  and  why 
popular  sentiment  tacitly  justifies, 
and  government  openly  permits,  this 
condition  of  things,  is  difficult  for  an 
ordinary  mind  to  comprehend.  That 
railroads,  traction  companies,  fur- 
naces, and  other  corporations  and  even 
the  government  itself  are  allowed  to 
violate  the  laws  and  to  conduct  their 
business  with  impunity  on  Sunday, 
while  the  grocer,  confectioner, 
merchant,  saloon-keeper,  mechanic, 
etc.,  are  held  to  account  and  often 


86  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

proceeded  against,  is  a  piece  of  un- 
fair discrimination  which  we  confess 
we  cannot  understand.  "  Equal 
privileges  to  all  "  is  a  beautiful  al- 
truistic sentiment.  But  that's  all  it 
is.  "All  men  are  created  equal," 
solemnly  declares  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  But  this  does  not 
make  them  so.  If  it  is  meant,  how- 
ever, that  all  men  are  born  equal,  we 
may,  perhaps,  consent  to  the  proposi- 
tion. But  granting  that  they  are 
born  equal,  the  equality  ends  there. 
It  terminates  where  it  began.  These 
two  million  industrial  slaves  beget 
children  predestinated,  as  it  were,  to 
their  parents'  ideas  and  lot. 

Justice  and  humanity  alike  demand 
that  the  government  should  uniform- 
ly and  indiscriminately  enforce  the 
Sabbath  laws,  or  else  incontinently 
abolish  them.  Christianity,  science, 
and  experience  strongly  and  unitedly 


PO VERTY ' S  FA CTOll  Y.  87 

commend  the  former  alternative. 
Every  wheel  should  be  stopped,  every 
whistle  silenced,  one  day  out  of  seven. 
The  church  and  the  world  would 
soon  adapt  themselves  to  the  new 
order  of  things.  But  so  long  as  the 
present  injustice  of  Sabbath  privilege 
on  the  one  hand  and  Sabbath  slavery 
on  the  other  continues,  so  long  will  it 
have  its  baleful  effect  in  feeding  the 
present  inequalities,  feverishness, 
restlessness,  and  discontent,  and  in 
breeding  more  of  them  in  many 
ramified  channels  in  the  future. 

The  King  of  kings  and  the  Lord 
of  lords  tenderly  cared  and  legislated 
for  the  manservant  and  the  maid- 
servant ;  but  the  iron  lord,  and  the 
bond  lord,  and  the  corporate  lord, 
and  the  other  gods  of  modern  myth- 
ology sit  in  the  house  of  lords  and 
legislate  for  themselves,  or  in  the 
House  of  the  Lord  and  patriotically 


88  POVERTY'S  FACTORT. 

sing,   "  The  powers  that  be   are  or- 
dained of  God  "  ! 

Thirdly,  The  injustice  of  an  in- 
sufficient land  tax.  We  do  not  in- 
tend now  to  advocate  the  doctrine  of 
Single  Tax  in  toto,  for  we  differ  from 
that  economic  creed  in  our  convic- 
tion that  other  forms  of  real  estate, 
such  as  buildings  and  other  improve- 
ments, should  be  taxed  by  the  state 
in  return  for  the  protection  it  gives. 
But  we  do  hold  with  our  Single-Tax 
brethren  that  it  can  be  clearly  per- 
ceived by  any  unprejudiced  mind 
that  lands  or  lots  in  or  near  great 
centres  of  population  do  not  begin 
to  make  a  fair  return  in  tax  to  the 
growing  community  which  has  really 
created  their  value.  The  just  maxim 
that  the  joint  producers  should  share 
profits  is  continually  being  violated— 
and  that  according  to  law — by  land- 
owners whose  empty  and  idle  lots 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  89 

are  assessed  at  less  and  often  far  less 
than  50  per  cent  of  their  selling  and 
actual  value.  The  value  created, 
not  by  the  individual  owner  or  by 
a  stroke  of  work  he  does,  but  by  the 
public,  passes  not  into  the  public 
treasury, where  it  rightly  belongs,  but 
into  his  own  private  pocket,  when- 
ever he  chooses  to  sell  the  property. 

Thus  enormous  wealth  can  accu- 
mulate in  the  hands  of  those  who  do 
little  or  nothing  to  produce  it,  unless 
waiting  for  the  growth  of  population 
be  considered  work.  In  this  way, 
for  example,  a  noted  family  in  New 
York  City  were  made  enormously 
rich.  Inequalities  are  continually 
multiplying  and  augmenting  from 
the  same  constant  cause.  The  pres- 
ent system  of  land  taxation  favors 
the  fortunate  few  and  deepens  in- 
stead of  relieves  the  misfortunes 
of  the  unfortunate  many.  Men  of 


90  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

shrewd  sagacity  will  take  advantage 
of  this  lack  of  law  on  the  subject 
of  land  taxation  as  long  as  the  law 
offers  the  chance.  We  don't  blame 
the  Astors  and  the  Astoroids.  But 
we  do  blame  the  people,  of  whom  we 
ourselves  are  part,  for  longer  per- 
mitting this  unjust  privilege.  The 
people  must  suffer  and  are  suffering 
for  their  sins  of  neglect  and  igno- 
rance. 

If  taxes  on  lots  were  proportion- 
atetely  raised  to  anywhere  near  their 
actual  value,  it  would  be  unprofit- 
able for  land  monopolists  such  as 
foreign  syndicates  and  individual 
landlords  to  hold  land  long  for  pur- 
poses of  mere  speculation,  to  grow 
financially  fat  on  the  labors,  priva- 
tions, and  risks  of  others.  They 
would  unload  their  land,  and  hold 
only  that  portion  which  they  could 
profitably  use  themselves.  Thou- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  91 

sands  would  buy  and  possess  them- 
selves of  a  home  which  they  could 
"  fondly  call  their  own."  Capital 
would  be  loosened  from  land  and 
seek  other  channels  of  investment  ; 
enterprises  of  various  kinds  would 
thus  be  stimulated,  and  the  army  of 
the  unemployed  would  be  reduced  by 
thousands.  This  is  not  a  Utopian 
dream  of  impractical  idealists,  but 
a  plan  of  taxation  which  has  been 
practically  applied  in  New  Zealand, 
and  which  has  contributed  so  largely 
to  the  phenomenal  progress  and  pros- 
perity observable  in  that  fortunate 
and  progressive  country.  It  is  being 
tried  also  in  so  old  and  staid  a  realm 
as  "Bonny  England,"  for  the  Y,000 
Parish  Councils  recently  created  pos- 
sess large  powers  and  can  assess  and 
levy  enhanced  taxes  on  land  at  the 
expense  of  the  owners  for  the  benefit 
of  the  working  people. 


92  PO  VER  TY '  8  FA CTOIi  Y. 

If  one  man  in  this  country  should 
own  the  entire  acreage,  apart  from 
all  improvements  in  or  on  it,  he 
would,  according  to  the  existing  rate 
of  taxation,  return  to  the  govern- 
ment, i.  e.,  to  the  people,  but  a 
microscopic  compensation  for  the 
sweeping  privilege  possessed.  Never- 
theless it  seems  to  me,  one  man 
should  so  own  the  entire  acreage  of 
this  country,  and  that  one  man 
should  be  the  government.  The 
state  should  own  the  land,  and  in- 
stead of  selling  it  to  syndicates  and 
foreigners,  should  hold  it  for  the 
people,  and  let  it  out  to  individual 
proprietors  (not  owners),  exacting 
in  return  a  rental  or  land  tax  graded 
according  to  the  value  of  the  plot 
of  ground  selected,  an  acre  in  the 
centre  of  New  York  city  bringing 
in  exactly  as  much  larger  an  income 
over  an  acre  in  the  Bad  Lands  or 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  93 

Florida  Everglades  as  the  one  is  more 
valuable  than  the  other.  On  this 
particular  point  of  the  government 
ownership  of  land,  Single  Tax  and 
Nationalism  are  one,  and  thus  far  we 
heartily  subscribe  to  both. 

Meanwhile,  or  until  land  taxation 
is  increased  to  the  point  of  unprofit- 
able long  tenure,  something  ought  to 
be  done  in  the  name  of  simple  justice, 
in  God's  name,  for  the  relief  of  those 
poor  victims  of  a  vicious  economic 
system  who  are  crowded  together  in 
the  tenement -houses  of  cities,  and 
who  for  years  and  centuries  have 
been  legally  robbed  of  property  rights. 
I  know  we  all  breathe  more  freely 
in  our  consciences  to  observe  a  move- 
ment in  philanthropic  Philadelphia, 
promoted  by  the  Culture  Extension 
League,  to  induce  landowners  to 
grant  the  use  of  vacant  lots  as  play- 
grounds, breathing  spaces  for  these, 


94  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

unfortunate  people  and  especially  for 
their  little  ones,  who  never  or  rarely 
saw  a  grass-blade  wave  or  a  wild- 
flower  bloom.  But  we  rejoice  still 
more  to  see  that  the  plan  of  turning 
such  vacant  lots  into  vegetable 
farms,  to  be  worked  by  poor  families, 
is  ready  to  be  put  into  operation  by 
the  New  York  Society  for  Improving 
the  Condition  of  the  Poor.  This  plan 
is  not  a  new  one.  It  has  been  experi- 
mented with  before,  and  has  proved 
an  abundant  and  a  grateful  success. 
Mayor  Pingree  of  Detroit  tried  it  last 
year  in  that  city,  and  although  at 
the  outset  it  was  ridiculed  by  the 
mayor's  many  opponents,  its  success 
soon  showed  that  it  was  a  great  help 
to  the  poor.  One  thousand  families 
in  part  supported  themselves  in  this 
manner  last  year,  the  value  of  the 
crops  they  raised  being  estimated  at 
$14,000.  The  land  at  their  disposal 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  95 

was  430  otherwise  idle  acres,  or  about 
YOOO  city  lots  ! 

In  this  connection  I  need  scarcely 
remind  the  reader  that  the  Income 
Tax,  to  more  justly  equalize  the 
burden  of  taxation  by  levying  di- 
rectly on  land  rentals  and  bond  in- 
terest, has  been  wrested,  split,  and 
mangled  until,  as  it  stands  now,  it  is 
one  of  the  worst  and  most  outrageous 
pieces  of  egregious  class  legislation 
ever  enacted  by  a  civilized  legislature. 
Its  unfair  discriminations  and  patent 
injustice  are  galling,  humiliating, 
and  appalling.  It  exempts  from 
taxation  the  income  of  landlords 
and  bond  lords,  home  and  foreign, 
individual  and  corporate,  the  very 
ones  best  able  to  pay  it,  and 
settles  the  burden  on  lower  finan- 
cial classes,  the  hard  workers  and 
middle  classes  who  already  sus- 
tain the  heaviest  load.  The  very 


96  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

game,  the  big  game,  the  Populists 
were  gunning  for,  has  not  been  hit. 
The  very  rich  are  made  richer,  and 
the  poor  poorer !  The  Income  Tax 
is  but  a  patent  specimen  of  other 
laws  equally  unjust  but  less  open, 
and  therefore  less  obnoxious  to  the 
people  in  their  operation.  It  is  not 
a  marvel  that  some  impulsive  and 
passionate  people  begin  to  feel  that 
this  country  might  get  along  better 
without  any  legislatures  at  all.* 

Fourthly,  Unfair  Assessments. 
The  fact  of  their  existence  is  notori- 
ous and  easily  proved.  The  proper- 
ties of  the  wealthy  are  assessed  at 
from  55  to  70  per  cent  of  their  value, 

*  Since  the  above  was  penned,  the  Supreme 
Court  lias  declared  the  Income  Tax  law  both  con- 
stitutional and  unconstitutional  !  In  each  official 
deliverance  there  was  a  majority  of  one  !  Con- 
sequently we  have  the  very  best  of  authority  for 
permitting  the  above  paragraph  to  remain  where 
and  as  it  is. 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  97 

while  those  of  the  poorer  classes  are 
rated  at  from  75  to  90  per  cent. 

A  friend  kindly  furnished  me  with 
the  following  statement  prepared 
after  a  careful  examination  of  the 
registry  books  at  our  court-house 
and  of  the  assessor's  books  at  city 
hall.  The  facts  here  stated  are  not 
simply  of  local  interest.  They  are 
typical  of  the  situation  in  all  cities  : 

26  vacant  lots  sold  at  a  total  of 
$74,815,  and  were  assessed  at  $33,525, 
or  44  per  cent  of  selling  value. 

26  improved  properties,  worth  over 
$5,000  each,  brought  $452,900,  and 
were  assessed  at  $264,750,  or  58  per 
cent  of  selling  value. 

20  improved  properties,  worth 
from  $2, 500  to  $5,000  each,  sold  for 
$57,505,  assessed  at  $39,150,  or  68 
per  cent  of  full  value. 

36  improved  properties,  worth  less 
than  $2,500  each,  brought  $59,070, 
7 


98  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

assessed  $42,650,  or  72  per  cent  of 
selling  value. 

Thus  you  perceive  the  astonishing 
rule  :  the  less  the  value,  the  heavier 
the  assessment  and  the  tax  ;  the 
greater  the  value,  the  less  the  assess- 
ment and  tax  ! 

This  gross  inequity  is  the  result  of 
influence  exerted  upon  the  assessors 
or  the  board  of  appeal  in  ways  bad 
and  indifferent  by  the  wealthy,  and  of 
the  fact  that  valuable  properties  are 
naturally  more  difficult  to  estimate. 
But  this  last  point  simply  emphasizes 
the  necessity  of  some  simpler,  safer, 
easier  method,  such  as  suggested  by 
the  Single  Tax.  The  result  of  the 
present  system  is,  that  from  those 
who  are  the  least  able  to  pay  it  and 
who  receive  less  recognition  and  in- 
dulgence before  civil  courts  and 
boards  of  appeals,  from  20  to  35  per 
cent  more  tax  is  exacted  than  from 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  99 

those  who  could  better  afford  to 
render  it  and  who  can  command 
recognition  and  pay  for  indulgent 
interpretations  and  concessions. 
The  tendency  and  outworkings  of 
such  an  unfair  system  verify  the 
paradoxical  prophecy  of  the  Master  : 
"To  him  that  hath  shall  be  given, 
and  from  him  that  hath  not  shall  be 
taken  even  that  which  he  seemeth  to 
have." 

If  anyone  is  disposed  to  doubt  the 
statement  here  made  in  reference  to 
the  gross  injustice  of  our  present  sys- 
tem of  assessing  properties,  let  me 
remind  him  that  Jay  Gould's  "  head- 
swimming  "  estate  of  $70,000,000 
was,  during  his  lifetime,  assessed  at 
the  paltry  bagatelle  of  only  $500,000  ! 
and  his  heirs  but  last  month  (April 
1st,  1895)  were  seeking  in  the  pro- 
bate court  of  New  York  to  set  aside 
the  present  assessment  of  $10,000,000, 


100  POVERTY1  S  FACTORY. 

which  is  only  one-seventh  of  that 
known  part  of  the  immense  estate 
whose  total  value  it  is  impossible 
definitely  to  ascertain  or  calculate. 

And  to  gaze  long  at  some  of  the 
quite  recent  proceedings  of  our  Bead- 
ing councilmanic  Board  of  Appeals 
makes  a  man  really  sick  with  dis- 
gust and  sad  that  such  things  are 
permitted  and  possible.  When  the 
president  of  a  large  and  powerful 
corporation  appeared  before  that 
board  to  make  his  appeal  he  was 
received  with  marked  and  unusual 
deference.  The  force  of  his  argu- 
ments appears  in  the  fact  that  the 
board  reduced  the  company's  assess- 
ment $38,000,  or  over  50  per  cent 
less  than  the  fair  and  just  amount 
agreed  upon  by  the  assessors. 
Another  gentleman's  assessment  was 
reduced  $27,000.  "  During  the  con- 
sideration of  this  man's  appeal," 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  101 

says  one  of  the  assessors,  "he  was 
allowed  to  remain  in  the  room, 
which  was  entirely  illegal  and  with- 
out precedent.  The  chairman  moved 
that  he  be  requested  to  retire,  but 
the  motion  was  voted  down,"  to  the 
chairman's  intense  disgust.  Some 
light  may  be  thrown  on  this  enigma 
by  the  fact  that  the  superintendent 
of  the  works  of  the  gentleman  ben- 
efited was  a  leading  member  of  the 
board  of  appeals. 

"  We  assessors,"  continues  the  one 
above  quoted,  "  conducted  our  labors 
with  fairness  to  all,  the  valuation  of  a 
foot  front  in  any  part  of  the  city  being 
on  the  same  basis,  and  that  thousands 
should  be  taken  from  one  property 
while  the  adjoining  real  estate  is  not 
considered  at  all,  is  a  matter  of  gross 
injustice." 

We  think  the  assessor  is  too  modest 
in  his  words.  For  such  palpable  dis- 


102  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

crimination  is  galling  and  outrageous 
injustice.  The  Philadelphia  Times 
took  notice  of  it  and  called  it  ' '  start- 
ling." But  the  thing  is  done  every- 
where, and  not  only  in  our  fair  city 
of  Eeading,  and  there  is  none  in  the 
state  fairer — "for  situation."  It  is 
a  sign  of  the  rottenn  ess  of  the  age.  A 
gentleman  who  is  a  very  experienced 
man  in  assessment  matters  in  this 
city  is  of  the  opinion  that  a  great 
many  men  in  councils  are  indebted 
for  councilmanic  existence  "to  corp- 
oration fatherhood  ;  that  corporations 
get  such  men  into  councils  for  the 
purpose,  among  others,  of  reducing 
their  assessments  ; "  and  by  way  of 
illustration  said  that  when  he  was 
assessor,  "  councilmen  cut  down  the 
assessments  on  certain  breweries  just 
one-half.  He  also  drew  attention  to 
the  large  real  estate  of  a  local  com- 
pany. To  the  best  of  his  recollection 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  103 

he  assessed  it  at  $85,000.  Their  rep- 
resentative argued  hard  and  long 
with  him  for  some  alleged  legal 
reasons  to  remove  the  assessment 
from  the  books.  He  refused  to  do 
so.  He  could  not  see  why  a  poor 
mechanic's  house  should  be  assessed 
up  to  the  highest  notch,  while  a 
great  big  corporation  is  exempted 
from  all  taxation  on  $85,000.  The 
company  have  not  paid  this  tax  up 
to  this  day." 

Fifth,  Disproportionate  or  Ine- 
quitable Tariff  Protection. — The  ef- 
fect of  tariffs  on  imported  articles  is 
and  is  intended  to  be  that  of  an  in- 
direct tax  paid  by  the  people  to  the 
government.  This  is  right,  good, 
and  necessary.  On  home  manufac- 
tures, however,  this  tax  goes  into  the 
pockets  of  the  "  protected  "  manufac- 
turers and  corporations,  who  do  not 
in  turn,  as  one  would  expect,  remit 


104  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

it  to  the  "  protecting  "  government, 
but  keep  it  themselves.  The  Ways 
and  Means  Committee  is  the  heaven 
for  all  who  seek  class  legislation,  that 
is,  special  privileges.  Events  like 
the  following  are  continually  occur- 
ring, and  have  become  so  common  as 
to  lose  their  awful  significance  to  the 
public  conscience. 

' 'When  the  coal  operators  ap- 
peared before  the  Ways  and  Means 
Committee  (in  1894),  in  order  to 
secure  a  duty  of  seventy- five  cents 
per  ton  on  coal,  it  was  given  out  to 
the  country  that  they  only  wanted  a 
tariff  high  enough  to  cover  the  dif- 
ference in  wages  to  labor  in  this 
country  and  that  paid  in  other  coun- 
tries ;  yet  we  see  that  the  price  which 
the  men  afterwards  struck  against 
was  but  thirty-five  cents  per  ton,  or 
forty  cents  less  than  the  tariff  duty. 
And  further  the  average  day's  wages 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  105 

of  soft-coal  miners  in  this  country  is 
but  $1.75,  while  the  average  wages  of 
the  miners  of  Nova  Scotia,  against 
whom  we  demand  protection,  is  $2. 75 
to  $3.00  per  day,  with  steady  work." 
Is  anyone  so  credulous  as  to  be- 
lieve the  above  philanthropic  protes- 
tations of  those  coal  operators,  and 
that  they  took  time  and  trouble  to 
obtain  a  hearing  before  the  Ways 
and  Means  Committee  solely  or 
chiefly  out  of  tender  regard  for  the 
interests  of  their  wage-earners,  who 
were  not  represented  before  that 
committee  ?  Is  there  anyone  any- 
where so  simple-minded  as  not  to 
perceive  that,  whereas  a  part  of 
this  tariff  duty  (which  afterwards 
appeared  in  the  enhanced  price 
of  coal)  may  have  gone  to  the 
miners  (although  even  this  is  ex- 
ceedingly problem  etical,  inasmuch 
as  they  received  $1.00  less  per  day 


106  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

than  miners  who  were  "unpro- 
tected "),  the  largest  part  of  that 
tariff  which  was  intended  "to  cover 
the  difference  of  wages"  went  into 
the  private  purses  of  the  operators 
themselves  or  of  those  whom  they 
represented  ?  And  if  operators  and 
manufacturers  are  to  be  thus  privi- 
leged and  paternally  "protected," 
why  not  the  laborers  too  ?  Why  not, 
let  us  ask,  have  a  tariff  on  laborers 
high  enough  to  be  truly  ' '  protect- 
ive," i.  e.,  prohibitory,  and  check  im- 
migration altogether,  and  thus  re- 
duce competition  in  the  labor  market 
for  the  benefit  of  the  laborers  already 
American  ?  Or,  if  not  prohibitory, 
at  least  impose  a  tax  of  so  much  per 
head  on  immigrants,  and  let  the  poor 
things  (who  ought  to  be  very  grate- 
ful for  such  "protection")  make  it 
up  or  get  it  back  by  charging  propor- 
tionately more  for  their  labor,  of  any 


POVERTY1 8  FACTORY.  107 

employer  who  might  chance  to  en- 
gage them  ?  The  very  proposition  is 
ridiculous,  and  simply  shows  on 
which  side  of  the  beam  of  justice  the 
balance  of  power  and  privilege  at 
present  lies. 

Congressman  M'Gann  says:  "  One 
thing  seems  to  have  been  established 
by  this  tariff  debate — that  capital 
never  accords  to  labor  more  than  the 
lowest  wages  it  is  compelled  to  pay. 
Interference  of  the  government  has 
always  been  in  behalf  of  capital. 
Labor  has  never  sought  bounties.  It 
is  only  capital  that  comes  here  when 
profits  are  not  sufficient  and  sues  for 
aid  to  carry  on  business.  After  it  is 
secured,  capital  never  shares  with 
labor  except  as  it  is  compelled  to." 

You  say,  brains,  intelligence, 
capital,  shrewdness,  deserve  greater 
rewards  than  mere  brawn  and  igno- 
rant honesty.  No  one  will  rise  to  dis- 


108  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

pute  this  proposition.  It  is  undoubt- 
edly true,  simply  because  it  is  based 
on  a  natural  principle.  But  are 
brains  forever  to  take  a  lion's  share 
instead  of  a  man's  ?  Is  mind  to  be 
brutal  in  the  exercise  of  its  superior 
power,  instead  of  human?  I  thank 
God  that  He  is  sublimely  just  as  well 
as  divinely  powerful.  But  in  Amer- 
ican economics  is  might  forever  to 
be  right  ?  Shall  the  abnormally  rich 
and  powerful  exercise  their  potencies 
with  an  eye  single  to  their  own  in- 
terests, and  a  long-suffering  Christian 
public  argue  and  compel  themselves 
to  believe  that  it  is  gloriously  con- 
sistent with  the  spirit  of  Christianity  ? 
Shall  all  of  us  applaud  when  a  very 
rich  man,  who  has  legally  robbed  a 
thousand  or  more  of  poor,  or  semi- 
poor,  people,  turns  around  and  gener- 
ously regales  their  manhood  and  in- 
dependence with  large  contributions 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  109 

to  soup  funds  and  Eelief  Societies  ? 
Surely  better  the  charities  than 
nothing  at  all.  Far  better.  But 
better  still,  not  the  original  legal 
robbery. 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I 
do  not  argue  against  tariffs  per  se. 
Whether  a  tariff  or  free- trade  policy 
for  this  country  would  be  best,  who 
can  decide  ?  But  I  believe  any  unprej- 
udiced mind  can  see  that  a  fair  and 
comprehensive  tariff,  though  strictly 
selfish,  would  undoubtedly,  for  the 
present  at  least,  work  wonders  for 
this  country  and  for  all  its  interests. 
But  a  fair  and  comprehensive  tariff 
is  well-nigh  an  impossibility,  owing 
to  the  numerous  and  complex  in- 
terests involved.  Therefore  we  say 
of  the  tariff  or  "protective"  policy 
what  we  said  of  the  Sabbath  law  : 
Either  make  it  fair  and  just  to  abso- 
lutely all  avocations,  or  abolish  it  in 


110  POVEE TY '  S  FA UTOU Y. 

toto  and  give  natural  instead  of  arti- 
ficial or  statute  law  a  chance  to  work 
out  its  own  ends.  Natural  law  is  of 
God.* 

Sixth,  Unrestrained  Stock  Inflation 
of  Corporations. — The  modus  oper- 
andi  of  this  sweeping  scheme  to  coin 
fortunes  is  not  the  abstruse  subject 
some  interested  parties  want  us  to 

*  Not  only  the  tariff,  but  prices,  rents,  manu- 
factures, and  everything  else,  especially  credit, 
have  experienced  an  excessive  inflation  since 
the  civil  war.  This  unnatural  condition  of  affairs 
cannot  last,  even  with  the  tariff  crutch  to  lean 
on.  Birds  cannot  fly  high  all  the  time.  They 
must  come  to  roost  on  terra  firma  some  day. 
So  our  soaring  country  must  relapse  into  a  less 
artificial  and  strained  and  a  more  natural  and 
healthy  economic  and  industrial  condition. 
Happiness  will  come  hand  in  hand  with  health, 
and  health  will  come  with  obedience  to  nature's 
laws,  for  natural  law  is  of  God.  And  one  of 
the  most  important  steps  in  this  obedience  is, 
as  will  be  seen  in  Chapter  VI,  comprehensive 
representation  in  legislative  bodies. 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  HI 

believe  it  to  be.  On  the  contrary  it 
is  quite  simple  and  easily  under- 
stood. The  officers  or  board  of  di- 
rectors of  a  corporation  or  syndicate, 
by  a  mere  vote  in  session  assembled 
and  by  means  of  a  printing  press  and 
some  paper,  double  or  even  triple  the 
bonded  indebtedness  and  stock  or. 
paper  capital.  These  shares  are 
quietly  boomed  by  interested  and 
shrewd  holders,  agents  of  the  direct- 
ors or  sub-agents,  who  are  usually 
men  of  supposed  integrity  and  of 
prominence  in  a  community.  Honest 
and  industrious  citizens,  hard  brain- 
and  brawn-workers,  widows  and 
orphans,  who  have  small  sums  and 
savings  to  invest,  naturally  seek  out 
and  consult  their  supposed  superiors 
in  reference  to  good  and  safe  places 
for  bestowing  their  money.  They 
are  told  that  the  paper  of  the  com- 
pany is  "good,"  "first  class,"  "gilt- 


112  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

edged,"  etc.,  and  thus  these  fictitious 
bonds  and  stocks  are  unloaded  at  or 
above  par  upon  the  innocent  and 
confiding  victims. 

The  company  or  corporation,  which 
now  has  an  indebtedness  far  exceed- 
ing the  value  of  its  real  estate  and 
assets,  may  be  able  to  pay  interest 
and  declare  dividends  for  a  time  ; 
but  when  even  the  slightest  financial 
disturbance  arrives,  it  is  quite  suf- 
ficient to  prick  and  burst  the  glorious 
bubble,  which  immediately  collapses 
in  some  form  or  other,  and  the  result 
is  that  the  poor  deluded  stock-buyers 
lose  all,  or  nearly  all,  while  the 
scoundrel  stock  "  inflators  "  walk  off 
with  their  thousands  and  hundreds 
of  thousands,  and  often  with  the 
books  of  the  concern,  too,  in  order  to 
forestall  legal  pursuit.  Witness  the 
notorious  examples  afforded  by  the 
history  of  some  of  our  western  trans- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  113 

continental  railroad  lines,  and  the 
quite  recent  scandal  of  the  Brooklyn 
City  Street  Railway  Company.  Yet 
all  these  transactions  are  in  strictest 
accordance  with  statute  laws. 

Another  deplorable  and  inevitable 
result  of  such  inflation  is,  the  em- 
ployees of  a  corporation  burdened 
with  an  enormous  paper  capital  are 
always  ground  down  to  the  lowest 
possible  notch,  in  order  that  divi- 
dends and  interest  may  be  made  and 
paid  on  that  portion  of  the  watered 
stock  already  sold,  to  the  end  that 
the  confidence  of  the  public  may  be 
thereby  secured,  and  the  value  of  the 
shares  rise,  when  the  scheming 
holders  rapidly  dispose  of  all  the 
shares  they  have  remaining,  grow- 
ing rich  at  a  jump  by  the  sale  of 
mere  paper,  without  doing  a  stroke 
of  real  work,  and,  like  vampires, 
fattened  financially  on  the  life-blood, 
8 


114  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

on   the   wreck   and   the  ruin  of  the 
honest,   the  confiding,   the  industri 
ous. 

Stock  inflation  is  a  most  damnable 
economic  sin,  most  damnable  be- 
cause so  tempting,  so  common,  so 
fraudulent,  so  legal ;  a  sin,  an  eco- 
nomic opportunity  afforded  by  legal 
laxness  or  lack  of  law,  which  contrib- 
utes more,  perhaps,  than  any  other 
one  cause  towards  rendering  the  un- 
scrupulous rich  richer,  and  the  inno- 
cent poor  poorer,  thus  directly  pro- 
ducing the  abnormal  extremes  which 
constitute  the  burden  resting  like  an 
awful  incubus  on  the  nation's  heart 
and  life  to-day. 

The  wary  and  well-informed  are 
intelligent  enough  to  defend  them- 
selves by  simply  declining  to  buy 
stock.  But  those  humble  and  honest 
souls  who  are  ignorant  of  the  serpen- 
tine twistings  and  cobra-like  infla- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  115 

tions  of  unscrupulous  corporations, 
can  be  protected  in  only  one  way, 
as  far  at  least  as  we  can  see,  and 
that  is  by  legislation  limiting  the 
issuance  and  sale  of  stock  to  a  fixed 
per  cent  beyond  the  value  of  the 
property  controlled  by  the  corpora- 
tion. But  as  long  as  soulless  cor- 
porations control  legislatures  hope 
for  the  passage  of  such  legislation 
is  worse  than  vain.  Actual  history 
bears  out  this  statement.  The  de- 
fenceless and  the  injured  must, 
therefore,  enjoy  the  opportunity  of 
defending  themselves.  Under  ex- 
isting circumstances  this  can  be 
afforded  only  by  the  method  sug- 
gested in  Chapter  VI. 

Seventh,  The  Prostitution  of  Leg- 
islatures by  Monopolistic  Selfishness 
and  Corporate  Greed.  The  terms 
applied  to  the  sin  of  stock  inflation 
apply  with  equal  pertinency  and  force 


116  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

to  this.  The  prostitution  of  legisla- 
tive bodies  by  companies  and  com- 
bines is  a  most  damnable  sin  because 
so  tempting,  so  common,  so  success- 
ful, so  legal,  so  iniquitous.  By  mild 
or  sweeping  bribery  in  one  form  or 
another  presidents  and  agents  of 
corporations  seduce  senators,  repre- 
sentatives, and  city  councilmen,  and 
thereby  secure  for  themselves  fran- 
chises and  monopolies  which  at  once 
put  them  in  a  position  to  compel 
millions  of  hard-working  people  of 
the  middle  and  lower  classes  to  pay 
small  increments  on  the  price  of  the 
monopolized  article  or  on  the  fran- 
chise granted,  the  mingled  streams 
of  which  soon  make  the  ringleaders 
enormously  wealthy,  and  gradually 
impoverish  the  defenceless  victims. 
Statute  laws  of  favoritism  always 
start  a  process  of  universal  suction 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  individual 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  117 

financial  battening  on  the  other. 
Events  in  our  own  state  constitute 
a  pretty  clear  mirror  wherein  every 
state  can  see  itself  and  the  iniquitous 
tendency  of  these  degenerate  times. 

Is  it  an  evidence  of  unselfish  pub- 
lic spirit  that  the  Standard  Oil  Co. 
labored  steadily  and  persistently  for 
so  long  a  period  as  eleven  years  to 
have  the  Marshall  Pipe  Line  Con- 
solidation Bill  become  a  law  ?  With- 
in thirty  days  after  the  governor 
signed  that  bill  the  price  of  kerosene 
or  coal  oil  made  two  forward  jumps, 
which  in  a  few  weeks  sent  millions 
of  dollars  rattling  into  the  com- 
panies' coffers. 

Electric  light,  heat,  power,  and 
traction  companies,  railroads,  trusts, 
and  combines,  by  the  glitter  and 
gleam  of  the  ghoul  of  gold,  are  pros- 
tituting the  people's  sworn  represent- 
atives, guardians,  and  law-makers, 


118  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

in  city  councils,  state  legislatures, 
congress,  and  everywhere.  (Since 
penning  the  above  our  state  legisla- 
ture has  passed  two  bills  relating  to 
electric-light  companies  which,  if 
signed  by  the  governor,  will  launch 
upon  the  long-suffering  public  one  of 
the  most  unconditioned  and  sweep- 
ing monopolies  of  modern  times, 
from  the  snaky  coils  of  which  the 
people  of  our  cities  will  struggle  in 
vain  to  free  themselves.  The  coun- 
try members  in  the  legislature,  hav- 
ing no  interest  in  the  bills  inasmuch 
as  they  do  not  affect  country  dis- 
tricts, did  not  exert  any  opposition, 
and  those  who  would  have  fought 
those  obnoxious  bills  tooth  and  nail 
were  not  on  the  floor  to  do  so.  This 
again  but  emphasizes  the  unques- 
tioned necessity  for  all  classes  of 
citizens  to  be  represented  where  laws 
are  made  so  vitally  affecting  all.) 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  119 

The  miasma  of  this  Satanic  sin 
steals  even  into  the  sacred  (?)  pre- 
cincts of  congressional  preserves. 
The  history  here  is  a  long  and  a 
nauseating  one.  It  will  be  sufficient 
to  mention  but  two  words,  "Sugar 
Trust,"  to  attract  a  legion  of  demons 
from  the  same  pit.  We  do  not  mean 
to  affirm  that  trusts  and  combines, 
when  formed  on  a  purely  business 
basis  by  the  free  agreement  of  busi- 
ness men,  and  when  kept  apart  from 
special  state  aid  or  government 
favoritism,  are  wrong  per  se.  We 
do  not  think  they  are.  In  union 
there  is  strength.  In  organization 
reside  efficiency,  economy,  and  prog- 
ress. But  when  such  an  organiza- 
tion interviews  senators,  representa- 
tives, and  councilmen,  and  secures  by 
direct  or  indirect  bribery  the  passage 
of  a  tariff  bill  or  the  gift  of  a  city 
or  state  franchise,  not  for  public  but 


120  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

for  private  gain  ;  not  for  the  benefit 
of  the  public  treasury,  but  for  the 
benefit  of  the  trust,  for  the  over- 
whelming advantage  of  capital,  and 
to  the  actual  injury  of  labor  through 
increase  of  cost  to  consumers  and  by 
throwing  out  of  work  6,500  men 
who,  as  in  the  case  of  the  sugar 
trust,  were  employed  in  refineries 
before  the  combination  was  effected  ; 
then,  I  assert,  the  most  "rapacious 
and  exacting  "  of  all  monopolies  act- 
ually becomes  a  law  of  the  land,  the 
people  become  the  prey  of  a  monster 
engine  of  selfishness,  the  crushed 
victims  of  legal  tyranny,  and  the 
slaves  of  a  legislative  power  which 
they  themselves  create  and  sustain. 

I  see  no  real  remedy  within  reach 
save  that  which  is  stated  in  Chapter 
VI. 

We  have  now  briefly  touched  upon 
the  seven  leading  laws  or  legalized 


PO  VER  TT '  8  FA  CTOB  T.  121 

economic  conditions  which,  we  be- 
lieve, constitute  the  hidden  root  from 
which  grows  the  enormous  weed  of 
abnormal  wealth.  By  the  action  of 
one  or  more,  or  by  the  interaction  of 
all  of  them,  the  production  of  enor- 
mous wealth  is  rendered  possible  and 
is  stimulated,  and  consequently  also 
abnormal  poverty.  These  are  the 
seven  great  wheels  in  poverty's 
factory,  huge,  powerful,  grinding 
ceaselessly  day  and  night,  unheard, 
unseen,  resistless,  awful,  iniquitous, 
tyrannical,  oiled  with  the  sacred 
unction  of  law,  and  rapidly  multi- 
plying their  two  characteristic  and 
protected  products,  abnormal  wealth 
and  abnormal  poverty. 

Nor  do  we  in  this  connection  over- 
look the  smaller  wheel  of  individual- 
ism. It  is  a  wheel  and  a  wheel  of 
force  in  poverty's  factory.  Its  influ- 
ence we  have  already  touched  upon 


122  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

in  the  paragraphs  on  thriftlessness 
and  intemperance.  But  it  must  be 
said  of  it,  first,  that  it  is  not  made 
and  protected  by  law,  and  secondly, 
of  itself  it  would  not  produce  wide- 
spread  economic  extremes,  that  is, 
general  poverty  and  abnormal  wealth. 
Every  one  of  the  immensely  rich 
men  in  this  country  has  become  so 
through  special  privileges  conferred 
by  legislation  positively  or  negative- 
ly, or  by  taking  privileges  with  im- 
punity in  direct  violation  of  law. 
The  opinion  still  largely  prevails  in 
many  quarters  that  these  men  ac- 
quired riches  on  the  principle  that 
mites  make  millions  and  bits  billions. 
I  deny  this.  No  man  in  the  period 
of  one  lifetime  ever  made  a  billion 
or  even  a  million  in  that  way.  It  is 
mathematically  impossible.  It  was 
done  by  sweeps,  by  leaps,  by  wind- 
falls, and  by  giant  speculations  fos- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  123 

tered  by  law.  It  came  by  bulks  and 
not  by  bits.  And  yet  all  by  legal 
permission. 

"But  is  the  law  always  right  in 
what  it  permits  ? "  pertinently  asks 
Hon.  W.  J.  Gaynor,  Justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Brooklyn.  "  If 
that  were  so  we  would  never  need 
to  change.  Jesus  was  tried  in  an 
august  court  and  convicted  accord- 
ing to  law,  and  in  our  own  day  and 
generation  the  poor  fugitive  slave, 
Dred  Scott,  was  taken  and  remanded 
back  into  human  slavery  by  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
in  strictest  conformity  to  law." 

Says  Prof.  E^y :  "  The  Jewish 
social  and  economic  law  was  to  the 
weak  a  bulwark  ;  to  the  oppressed,  a 
stronghold  ;  to  assaulted  feebleness, 
a  fortress  ;  for  all,  in  times  of  dis- 
tress, a  refuge.  It  was  thus  that 
Israel  found  the  law  'a  delight,' 


124  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

and    rapturously    i  meditated    in    it 
day  and  night.' ' 

But  I  respectfully  ask  :  With  all 
our  boasted  "progress"  and  " cul- 
ture," can  this  glowing  tribute  be 
conscientiously  paid  to  the  existing 
system  of  our  laws  and  courts  of  law 
to-day  ?  Are  they  a  bulwark  for 
"  the  weak,"  a  stronghold  for  the 
oppressed,  and  a  fortress  for  as- 
saulted feebleness  ?  Do  we  medi- 
tate upon  our  laws  to-day  with  de- 
light ?  Do  we  lay  awake  nights  to 
enjoy  the  spectacle  of  our  ravishingly 
beautiful  legal  Arcadia  ?  '  Nay,  it 
seems  to  me  Isaiah's  scathing  denun- 
ciation of  the  nation's  leaders  in  his 
age  will  apply  now.  "Thy  princes 
are  rebellious,  and  companions  of 
thieves ;  every  one  loveth  gifts  and 
followeth  after  rewards ;  they  judge 
not  the  fatherless,  neither  doth  the 
cause  of  the  widow  come  unto  them." 


POVERTY'S  FACTOR Y.  125 

"The  human  race,"  continues 
Judge  Gay  nor,  "  must  move  forward 
by  making  laws  and  conditions  bet- 
ter. To  say  that  a  thing  is  done 
according  to  law  or  that  there  is  no 
law  forbidding  it,  does  not  always 
relieve  it  from  moral  odium.  Crooked 
transactions  are  to  be  found  in  nearly 
every  locality  in  the  country.  They 
have  come  to  be  the  order  of  the  day. 
In  place  of  being  checked  by  laws,  they 
are  often  fostered  by  laws.  If  this 
condition  were  to  continue,  what  the 
end  would  be  no  one  who  has  studied 
over  causes  and  effects  can  fail  to  per- 
ceive with  clear  vision.  The  prime 
object  of  government  is  "  [would  that 
the  world  might  hear  his  word  and 
believe  !]  "to  promote  distributive 
justice,  and  thereby  make  the  gov- 
erned stable  and  content,  and  no  gov- 
ernment which  does  not  do  this  may, 
in  the  nature  of  things,  long  endure." 


126  PO  VER  TY '  S  FA  CTOR  Y. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  CURE. 

I  DESIRE  to  preface  what  I  shall 
have  to  say  with  the  unqualified  as- 
sertion that  the  final  cure  for  all 
forms  of  evil  both  gross  and  refined 
io  the  Scriptural  one,  "  En  Kurio," 
individual  regeneration  (not  merely 
reformation)  by  the  power  and  opera- 
tion of  the  Holy  Spirit  through  the 
God-ordained  means  of  grace,  and 
thus  the  establishment  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  on  earth.  This  is  the 
ultimate  and  loftiest  ideal  after 
which  we  must  all  ceaselessly  strive. 
But  I  feel  ready  to  claim  that  much 
can  be  done  in  certain  directions  to 
accelerate  this  glorious  end.  "Pre- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  127 

pare  ye  the  way  of  the  Lord."  Men 
are  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  com- 
ing of  the  kingdom.  I  now  proceed 
to  indicate  certain  definite  lines  along 
which  preparation  should  be  made, 
and  that  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
how  the  Church  of  Christ  can,  if 
she  is  in  earnest,  labor  practically 
for  the  sublime  cause  of  human  bet- 
terment. 

We  now  put  the  question,  Whence 
is  the  immediate  alleviation  to  come  ? 
Where  and  what  is  the  cure  ? 

Candidly,  we  do  not  see  in  the 
Swiss  Initiative  and  Referendum  all 
the  blessings  its  admirers  claim  for 
it.  One  of  its  most  enthusiastic  ad- 
vocates, Mr.  W.  D.  McCrackan,  is 
cautious  and  candid  enough  in  his 
estimate  to  admit  that  "it  is  not  a 
cure-all  for  social  and  economic  ills. 
It  does  not  affect  the  production  and 
distribution  of  wealth.  It  will  not 


128  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

banish  the  tramp  at  one  end  of  the 
social  scale,  or  the  millionaire  at  the 
other."  Nevertheless,  if  nothing  else 
is  attempted  soon,  we  should  like  to 
see  the  system  tried  on  American 
soil.  It  is  not  the  Swiss  plan,  how- 
ever, which  I  desire  to  call  your  at- 
tention to  in  this  paper,  but  quite  a 
different  method  of  cure. 

Medically  I  am  a  homeopathist,  a 
firm  believer  in  the  beneficence  of  the 
law  of  similars,  "  Similia  similibus 
curantur."  If,  therefore,  legislation 
has  produced  the  disease,  legislation 
will  remove  it.  Yea,  I  will  go  so  far 
even  as  to  grant  that  if  class  legisla- 
tion, partiality,  and  favoritism  is  the 
cause,  class  legislation,  partiality, 
and  favoritism  for  a  while  in  behalf 
of  the  other  side,  of  the  hitherto  op- 
pressed, of  those  who  never  beg 
bounties  before  the  Ways  and  Means 
Committee,  will  prove  the  cure,  or, 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  12J 

at  least,  tend  to  restore  the  true  bal- 
ance of  power  and  privilege.  If  there 
must  be  favoritism  let's  have  a  little 
of  it  on  the  neglected  side  for  a  while. 
But  such  class  legislation  or  legisla- 
tive doctoring  must  continue  only  for 
a  time,  only  so  long  as  the  present 
extremes  last,  only  until  the  economic 
congestion  is  counteracted,  when 
all  further  heroic  treatment  must 
cease.* 

But  since  the  principle  of  selfish- 
ness reigns  and  rules  in  legislatures 
as  it  does  generally  everywhere  else, 
this  legislative  counteraction  for  the 
neglected  and  oppressed  can  be  ef- 
fected only  by  them.  They  them- 
selves must  be  on  the  floor  to  conserve 
their  own  interests.  It  is  sheer  non- 

*  The  Income  tax  in  its  original  form  would, 
doubtless,  have  acted  as  a  temporary  corrective 
or  emollient ;  but  in  its  actual  mangled  shape, 
as  an  irritant  of  the  worst  kind. 
9 


130  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

sense  and  maudlin  sentimentalism  to 
expect  their  enemies  and  oppressors 
to  do  this  for  them.  Consequently 

COMPREHENSIVE    REPRESENTATION 

is,  it  seems  perfectly  clear  to  me,  the 
practical  and  attainable  goal  towards 
which  the  middle  and  lower  classes 
should  patiently  and  unwaveringly 
push  forward.  In  one  word,  com- 
prehensive representation  is  the 
panacea  I  have  to  propose  for 
the  economic  diseases  of  the  day. 
Comprehensive  representation  would 
produce  comprehensive  legislation, 
and  that  is  undoubtedly  the  great 
need  of  the  hour.  Let  our  represen- 
tation in  Congress  be  more  truly 
representative.  To  effect  this  let 
the  present  geographical  basis  of 
representation  be  paralleled  or  sup- 
plemented by 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  131 

AN   INDUSTRIAL  AND   PROFESSIONAL 
BASIS ; 

i.  e.,  instead  of  having  merely  elec- 
toral districts  consisting  of  geograph- 
ical sections  embracing  political 
parties  composed  of  a  promiscuous 
medley  of  industries  and  professions, 
let  every  recognized  profession, 
trade,  and  avocation  existing  within 
these  geographical  or  electoral  dis- 
tricts separate!}'  organize,  and  send 
its  proportionate  number  of  delegates 
to  the  convention  of  the  next  higher 
or  larger  district  or  section,  and  so 
on  until  the  state  and  national  legis- 
latures are  reached.  If  it  is  true, 
for  example,  that  the  fanners 
number  three-fourths  of  our  total 
population,  then  they  ought  to  have, 
approximately  at  least,  three-fourthn 
of  the  total  number  of  congressmen. 
Merchants,  mechanics,  laborers, 


132  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

manufacturers,  publishers,  ministers, 
lawyers,  and  so  on  to  the  end  of  the 
list,  should  be  entitled  and  com- 
manded to  organize  and  send  their 
ratio  of  representatives  to  Congress, 
to  the  state  legislatures,  and  to 
municipal  councils. 

This  plan  would  not  be  as  difficult 
to  inaugurate  and  carry  out  as  one 
might  at  first  thought  of  it  suspect. 
Nearly  all  kinds  of  tradesmen,  labor- 
ers, manufacturers,  and  professional 
men,  voters  in  the  land,  are  already 
severally  organized.  There  are  the 
trades  unions,  state  and  national 
brotherhoods,  leagues,  manufac- 
turers' clubs,  medical  societies,  legal 
fraternities,  and,  among  the  clergy, 
synods,  assemblies,  and  conferences. 
These  existing  organizations  could 
easily  be  utilized  as  bases  or  nuclei  and 
be  severally  perfected,  and  then  be 
divided  into  state,  congressional  dis- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  133 

trict,  county,  township,  municipal,  and 
ward  divisions,  and  be  empowered  with 
electoral  prerogatives  and  accorded 
representation  in  municipal,  county, 
state,  and  national  legislative  bodies 
based  on  a  fixed  ratio  to  member- 
ship. In  case  the  three  rival  schools 
of  medicine  or  the  three  grand  divi- 
sions of  theism  (Protestants,  Catholics, 
and  Jews)  could  not  harmoniously 
co-operate  in  their  respective  electoral 
bodies  or  unite  on  some  modus 
agendi,  they  might  each  organize 
independently,  and,  failing  in  this, 
be  dropped  out  of  the  list  altogether. 
For  if  any  set  could  not  organize 
themselves,  they  would  not  be  fit  to 
make  or  change  laws  either  for  them- 
selves or  for  others.  In  the  case  of 
small  interests,  too  small  to  have  the 
number  required  to  entitle  them  to 
even  one  representative,  they  could 
join  together,  or  unite  with  a  larger 


134  POVEETY^S  FACTORY. 

body   industrially    or    professionally 
near  of  kin. 

Let  us  briefly  tabulate  the  benefits 
and  advantages  of  industrial  and 
professional  representation. 

1.  Every  avocation  having  a  being 
in   this  country  would   have   a   fair 
chance  to  make  its  wants  and  needs 
felt    at  the   legislative    fountain   or 
factory  where  laws  are  framed  affect- 
ing every  avocation. 

2.  All   lines  of   activity  would  be 
represented  according  to   their  rela- 
tive importance  or  numerical  promi- 
nence in  the  land. 

3.  The  best  elements  in  our  com- 
munities  would   appear  at    the   pri- 
maries, for  all  would  be  sure  of  meet- 
ing    there     none     but    their     own 
industrial  or  professional  associates  ; 
and,  moreover,  the  places  for  holding 
their  respective  primaries  would  be 
selected  according  to-  the  tastes  and 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  135 

wishes  of  each  organization.  Saloon 
men,  for  example,  could  continue  to 
meet  in  saloons,  but  could  not  compel 
others  to  do  so. 

4.  Better   men   would   be  sent    to 
councils,  to  the  state  legislatures,  and 
to  congress  for  the  simple  reason  that 
each   industrial   and  professional  or- 
ganization would  be  more  familiarly 
acquainted   with   the   men  who  are 
prominent  and  trustworthy  in  their 
respective  lines  of  labor  than  with 
men  in  other  lines.     We  would  all 
know  more  about  the  true  character 
and  capacities  of  our  candidates  and 
officers    than   we  do    or  can  know 
under  the  present  system. 

5.  There  would  be  more  real  in- 
terest  taken   in   and    more    earnest 
study  devoted   to   the  business  and 
requirements  of  sound   government 
by  everybody,  for  all  would  feel  them- 
selves directly  needed  and  concerned. 


136  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

Government  would  be  lifted  out  of 
the  political  sphere  into  the  business 
realm  where  we  think  it  belongs. 
Statesmanship  is  not  politics,  but 
business,  and  should  so  be  considered 
by  one  and  all.  But  under  the  pres- 
ent system  we  supinely  permit  the 
saloon  power  and  political  bosses, 
fully  as  corrupt  and  venal  and  selfish, 
to  name  candidates  suitable  to  them- 
selves, and  after  we  have  manfully  (?) 
and  patriotically  (?)  deposited  our  lit- 
tle vote  for  the  political  puppets  thus 
created,  we  go  home  and  sweetly 
dream  that  government  will  take  care 
of  itself  and  prosper,  and  that  justice 
will  be  done  to  all  ! 

6.  If  injustice  should  be  done  to 
any  interest  we  would  all  know  just 
where  to  put  the  blame,  viz.,  upon 
its  own  representatives  on  the  floor, 
whose  inactivity,  lack  of  vigilance, 
wisdom,  or  tactics,  laid  them  open  to 


POVERTY'S  FACTO  nr.         137 

imposition  or  defeat.  But  at  present 
all  avocations  and  interests  have  not 
the  chance  even  (or  at  least  a  very 
remote,  indirect,  and  small  chance)  to 
make  their  voice  heard  and  to  defend 
themselves. 

7.  Vote-purchase,  bribery,  and  the 
prostitution  of  the  law-making 
power  on  the  part  of  unscrupulous 
trusts  and  selfish  combines  and  cor- 
porations would  be  rendered  so  diffi- 
cult, owing  to  the  large  number  of 
electoral  bodies  sending  their  repre- 
sentatives to  councils,  state  legisla- 
tures, and  congress,  that  this  subtle 
and  satanic  sin  would  be  practically 
eliminated  from  the  political  and 
economic  arena.  It  would  require 
too  much  money,  in  the  first  place,  to 
reach  and  influence  the  large  number 
of  organized  industries  and  profes- 
sions ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  many 
of  these  would  be  morally  far  above 


138  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

the  reach  of  bribes  ;  and,  thirdly,  many 
more  would  be  intellectually  too  sharp 
for  the  specious  wool-pulling  pretexts 
of  golden-tongued  combine  presidents 
and  silver-lined  trust  agents.  But 
under  the  present  system  all  they 
have  to  do  is  to  pay  the  leader  or 
leaders  of  the  party  in  power.  To 
him  or  them  they  go  as  the  head  of 
political  and  legislative  authority. 
But  industrial  and  professional  repre- 
sentation would  make  too  many  heads 
for  bribers  to  attend  to.  They  simply 
could  not  get  and  keep  this  refractory 
medley  of  representative  heads  in 
line. 

"  It  may  still  be  necessary,  in  that 
stage  of  political  development  which 
the  world  has  reached,  that  one-half 
plus  one  of  the  members  of  a  legisla- 
ture should  have  power  to  pass  bills 
over  the  objections  of  one-half  minus 
one  of  their  colleagues,  but  it  is 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  139 

eminently  unjust  that  the  party  or 
parties  in  opposition  should  not  have 
their  fair  share  of  representatives  to 
discuss  those  bills.  In  the  federal 
election  of  congressmen  in  1892 
twelve  million  votes  were  polled  in 
round  numbers,  six  and  one-half 
million  secured  representation,  and 
five  and  one-half  million  were  un- 
successful. But  these  five  and  one- 
half  million  continue  to  pay  taxes, 
although  unrepresented.  We  can  go 
even  further,  and  say  that  not  only 
are  these  same  tax-paying  citizens  un- 
represented, they  are  actually  mis- 
represented by  their  opponents, 
elected  from  their  districts.  This  is 
not  a  good  showing  for  a  nation 
which  once  waged  war  against  the 
injustice  of  '  taxation  without  repre- 
sentation,' and  has  always  boasted 
of  the  blessings  of  majority  rule.  If 
there  be  a  political  prophecy  which  it 


140  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

is  safe  to  make  at  this  time,  it  is  that 
our  representative  system  cannot  re- 
main in  its  present  form  for  another 
decade,  if  the  republic  is  to  endure." 
(W.  D.  McCrackan  in  "Swiss  Solu- 
tions".) 

Some  one  here  objects  and  says 
that  if  industrial  and  professional  rep- 
resentation were  the  law,  brainless 
men  would  get  to  councils,  to  the 
state  legislatures,  and  to  congress.  I 
reply,  and  the  public  press  has  no 
hesitancy  in  telling  us,  that  we  have 
some  there  now.  But  even  if  it 
should  happen,  as  happen  it  would 
not,  that  blockheads  might  at  any 
time  be  in  the  majority,  they  would 
act  well,  nevertheless,  viz.,  as  a 
wholesome,  natural,  and  representa- 
tive block  to  the  selfish  and  class 
legislation  of  brainy  and  grasping 
monopolists  or  idle  proteges. 

As  a  miniature  of  the  larger  body, 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  141 

look  at  the  beneficent  operation  of 
even  approximately  comprehensive 
representation  in  our  state  legislature 
now  in  session.  The  rural  members 
hold  the  balance  of  power.  Their 
superior  numbers  in  the  state  make 
their  superiority  in  the  state  legis- 
lature a  matter  of  plain  and  natural 
justice.  Their  power  was  shown  by 
the  defeat  of  the  bill  to  establish  a 
state  game  commission.  The  bill 
provided  for  the  appointment  of  ten 
game  protectors,  among  whom  over 
$10,000  was  to  be  annually  distrib- 
uted, or  $1,000  apiece,  and  travel- 
ling expenses,  simply  for  gadding 
over  the  state,  making  free  with  the 
lands  (and  perhaps  the  ladies)  of  the 
farmers,  and  enjoying  themselves 
generally  as  free  and  jolly  good 
huntsmen.  Over  $10,000  of  your 
taxes  and  mine  and  the  farmers',  to 
furnish  ten  idle  but  shrewd  fellows 


142  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

with  a  prolonged  picnic  !  But  the 
farmers  were  on  the  floor  and  in  fair- 
ly proportionate  numbers  to  defeat 
this  obnoxious  bill.  All  glory  to  the 
country  lads  !  Hurrah  for  the  agra- 
rians !  The  defeat  of  this  bill 
alarmed,  it  is  publicly  reported, 
many  of  the  city  members  of  the 
house,  and  they  soon  became  willing 
for  the  first  time  this  session  to  make 
terms  with  the  grangers  !  And  now, 
thank  God  !  these  same  sound  and 
solid  rustics  are  turning  their  atten- 
tion to  the  liquor  men,  and  instead 
of  making  up  the  deficit  in  the  state 
treasury  by  withholding  or  reducing 
the  appropriations  for  education,  they 
want  to  do  it  by  increasing  the  taxes 
on  the  bibulous  brethren.  Hurrah 
for  the  aggressive  agrarians  !  It 
would  be  a  celestial  blessing  for  this 
country  if  some  of  the  good,  conserv- 
ative, sound,  common  sense  of  our 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  143 

patriotic  and  level-headed  farmers 
could  have  an  opportunity  to  air  it- 
self in  our  national  legislative  halls, 
and  with  its  fresh  country  breezes 
drive  out  certain  noxious  vapors 
therein  and  ventilate  those  stuffy  and 
stifling  apartments. 

Industrial  and  professional  repre- 
sentation would  certainly  be  more 
comprehensive  and  equitable.  It 
would  absolutely  abolish  gerryman- 
dering and  all  possibility  of  it.  It 
would  render  possible  the  enactment 
of  laws  for  curbing  stock  inflation  by 
corporations.  It  would  strike  a  tell- 
ing blow  at  the  omnivorous  greed 
and  shameless  bribery  of  trusts  and 
combines.  It  would,  in  the  most  nat- 
ural manner,  provide  for  the  adequate 
representation  of  minorities,  which, 
says  John  Stuart  Mill,  " 'is  an  essen- 
tial part  of  democracy,  for  no  real 
democracy,  nothing  but  a  false  show 


144  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

of  democracy,  is  possible  without  it." 
Industrial  and  professional  represen- 
tation would  logically  result  in  more 
equitable  and  comprehensive  legisla- 
tion. In  short,  industrial  and  profes- 
sional representation  would  be  a  Nem- 
esis to  oppressors  and  the  "  sword  of 
the  Lord  and  of  Gideon  "  to  the  op- 
pressed. 

The  wronged,  therefore,  have  it  in 
their  own  power  to  right  their  wrongs, 
and  their  most  effective  weapon  is  not 
the  strike,  nor  the  bullet,  but 

THE  BALLOT. 

If  walking  delegates  would  but  urge 
this  legal  and  lawful  means  of  redress 
and  abandon  their  contemptible  and 
sensational  strike  and  rebellion 
schemes,  incalculable  good  would  be 
accomplished.  Or,  if  workmen  would 
only  close  their  ears  to  the  anarchistic 


POVERTY1  S  FACTORY.  145 

incendiarism  of  their  pseudo- friends 
and  listen  to  the  sound  advice  of  true 
and  broad-minded  labor-leaders,  such 
as  U.  S.  Stephens  and  Mr.  Powderly, 
the  same  end  would  be  reached. 

At  one  of  the  most  important  in- 
dustrial congresses,  held  at  Rochester, 
N.  Y.,  in  1874,  a  resolution  was 
adopted  which  recognized  in  the  bal- 
lot-box the  great  agency  through 
which  economic  wrongs  can  be  re- 
dressed. One  of  the  last  injunctions 
of  Grand  Master  Workman  Stephens, 
in  his  farewell  address  to  the  Knights 
of  Labor,  in  1879,  strongly  endorsed 
the  ballot-box  and  scored  the  strike. 
Mr.  Powderly  always  strove  hard  to 
adhere  to  the  principles  laid  down  by 
him  in  1883.  "  I  will  never  advocate 
a  strike  unless  it  be  a  strike  at  the 
ballot-box,"  said  he,  "  or  such  an  one 
as  was  proclaimed  to  the  world 
by  the  unmistakable  sound  of  the 

10 


146  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

strikers'  guns  on  the  field  of  Lexing- 
ton. 'But  the  necessity  for  such  a 
strike  as  the  latter  does  not  exist  at 
present.  The  men  who  made  the 
name  of  Lexington  famous  in  the 
world's  history  were  forced  to  adopt 
the  bullet  because  they  did  not  then 
possess  the  ballot.  We  have  the 
latter  ;  and  if  the  money  of  the  mo- 
nopolists can  influence  us  to  deposit 
our  ballot  in  favor  of  our  enemies,  if 
we  cannot  be  depended  on  to  go 
quietly  to  the  polling  booth  and  sum- 
mon to  our  aid  moral  courage  enough 
to  deposit  a  little  piece  of  paper  in 
our  own  interest,  how  can  it  be  ex- 
pected of  us  to  summon  physical 
courage  enough  to  do  battle  for  our 
rights,  as  did  our  fathers  at  Lexing- 
ton ? " 

Workingmen  have  the  ballot ;  but, 
as  Mr.  Powderly  suggests,  and  he 
ought  to  know,  they  do  not  have  the 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  147 

independence,  wisdom,  manhood,  and 
courage  to  use  it  against  their-shrewd 
and  powerful  oppressors.  •  ' '  That  re- 
forms sought  by  labor  can  be  secured 
through  legislation  "  is  the  private 
conviction  and  public  teaching  of 
Grand  Master  Workman  Sovereign, 
to  which  we  trust  he  will  always 
consistently  adhere,  it  should  be 
a  source  of  devout  gratulation 
to  all  law-abiding  citizens  that 
the  working  classes  are  coming  to 
view  the  situation  and  its  demands 
in  this  light.  I  consider  such  expres- 
sions, issuing  from  the  lips  of  labor- 
leaders,  far  more  of  a  rainbow  of 
promise  than  the  turbulence  which 
stirs  Lord  Macaulay's  poetical  ad- 
miration. "If  workingmen  would 
strike  and  strike  hard  just  one  day  at 
the  ballot-box,  it  would  do  more  good 
than  a  whole  year's  strike  by  refusing 
to  work,"  says  the  Chicago  Sentinel, 


148  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

an  organ  of  their  own.  The  toilers 
have  good  friends  who  give  good  ad- 
vice, but  they  do  not  take  it,  apply  it, 
or  gain  by  it. 

Oh  "  would  some  power  the  giftie 
gie"  them  to  look  and  learn  from 
recent  events.  Indeed,  we  can  all 
learn  a  lesson  and  take  courage  from 
what  has  been  accomplished  in  Eng- 
land by  the  creation  of  Parish  Coun- 
cils secured  through  control  of  the 
London  County  Council,  a  control 
which  resides  in  more  comprehensive 
representation  gained  by  the  ballot. 
This  Parish  Council  deserves  more 
than  a  mere  passing  word  of  mention. 
There  are  in  England  over  7,000  of 
these  councils,  which  are  really  local 
governments.  The  first  election  took 
place  last  December  (1894),  and  the 
results,  as  stated  in  a  recent  number 
of  the  Contemporary  Review,  show 
that  about  15,000  of  that  class  of  per- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  149 

sons  who  are  engaged  in  various 
forms  of  labor  have  actually  entered 
into  authority.  Farm  hands,  mechan- 
ics, small  storekeepers,  and  farmers 
have  swept  the  field.  "Certainly," 
comments  the  editor  of  the  Philadel- 
phia Ledger,  "  the  recent  English  leg- 
islation and  elections  have  worked  a 
peaceful  revolution  in  English  local 
government,  which  cannot  fail  to 
make  itself  felt  in  increasing  the  labor 
and  working  element  in  Parliament, 
and  quickening  the  growing  demand 
for  further  legislation  in  favor  of  the 
working  classes  at  the  expense  of 
property  and  vested  interests.  The 
new  Parish  Councils  can  assess  and 
levy  taxes  at  the  expense  of  the  owners 
of  the  land  for  the  benefit  of  the  work- 
ing people.  The  schemes  on  foot  for 
making  still  further  inroads  by  en- 
hanced taxation  of  land  and  houses  in 
London  may  yet  be  enacted  into  law, 


150  PO  VER  TY'8  FA  CTOB  Y. 

and  then  the  revolution,  which  is 
still  confined  to  the  rural  districts, 
will  be  on  trial  in  the  great  me- 
tropolis, which  is  just  about  making 
a  new  experiment  in  local  govern- 
ment." 

I  say,  therefore,  standing  on  the 
heights  of  recent  events  both  in  Eng- 
land and  in  our  own  state  legisla- 
ture, we  can  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
Promised  Land,  the  land  of  more 
equitable  distribution,  a  condition 
where  official  positions  of  legislative 
power,  and  of  wealth  regulated  and 
controlled  thereby,  will  be  more 
justly  and  evenly  distributed.  Com- 
prehensive representation  effected  by 
the  ballot  in  the  hands  of  industrial 
and  professional  electoral  bodies  is 
both  practicable  and  attainable,  and 
will  bring,  must  bring,  the  blessings 
for  which  reformers  and  all  good 
people  wait  and  pray  and  labor. 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  151 

As  a  logical  deduction  of  the  fore- 
going, we  can  easily  see  that  it  is  all 

WASTE   TIME  AND  ENERGY  TO  ABUSE 
WEALTHY  INDIVIDUALS 

for  the  hard  times,  sufferings,  in- 
equalities, and  injustice  regnant  to- 
day. It  is  the  economic  system  or 
complexity  of  laws  which  has  made 
such  a  condition  possible  that  we 
should  attack.  I  really  cannot  so 
much  blame  the  Goulds,  Rockefellers, 
Fields,  Vauderbilts,  Pullmans, 
Sages,  Greens,  Armours,  Astors, 
Stewarts,  etc.,  for  taking  advantage 
of  the  situation  as  they  found  it,  or 
for  striving  by  shrewdness  and  wire- 
pulling to  perpetuate  it.  If  they  had 
not  done  so,  others  would.  Circum- 
stanced as  they  were,  you  and  I 
doubtless  would  have  done  precisely 
the  same,  and,  like  them,  we  should 


152  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

not  now  be  found  urging  any  change 
in  the  present  economic  system. 
What  else  could  be  expected  of  self- 
ish human  nature  ?  The  economic 
agitation  and  searching  investigation 
of  this  age  do  not  arise  from  the 
money-  and  landlords.  People  cry 
only  when  they  are  hurt.  Worms 
twist  only  when  trampled  on.  The 
favored  few  would,  if  they  could, 
continue  the  present  regime  un- 
changed until  doomsday.  Their 
opinions  in  reference  to  the  present 
social  and  industrial  problems  are 
worth,  therefore,  very  little.  It's 
the  system,  consequently,  and  not 
its  darlings  that  should  be  the  main 
point  of  attack.  "The  existing 
system  is  far  from  being  ideal," 
says  the  Kev.  Washington  Gladden, 
D.  D.  "To  every  one  according  to 
his  power  is  the  underlying  prin- 
ciple of  the  present  system  of  dis- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  153 

tribution.  Such  a  system  cannot 
be  in  accordance  with  the  will  of 
a  Father  to  whom  the  poor  and 
needy  are  the  especial  objects  of 
care." 

Indeed  it  is  amazing  that  the  mid- 
dle classes  will  permit  the  continu- 
ance of  a  system  which  invites  and 
compels  law-breaking  and  other  im- 
moralities, both  at  the  top  and  at  the 
bottom,  in  the  highest  and  lowest 
strata.  We  have  seen  how  it  pro- 
duces these  evils  at  the  favored  top. 
Now  glance  into  the  depths.  Is  it 
indeed  not  a  queer  condition  of 
affairs  which  obliges  an  honest  man, 
who  would  work  and  wants  work,  to 
wander  chilled,  hungry,  and  home- 
less in  the  streets  at  night,  yet  fur- 
nishes him  with  warmth,  lodging, 
food,  and  clothing  the  moment  he 
becomes  a  criminal  ?  The  New  York 
papers  published  an  item  of  how, 


154  POVERTY1 S  FACTORY. 

"having  sought  relief  and  work  in 
vain  from  organizations  and  individ- 
uals, on  Sunday  night  "  (in  February, 
1895)  "  a  poor  devil  broke  a  $75  plate- 
glass  window  in  the  shop  of  a  Nassau 
Street  tailor,  from  which  he  stole 
$20  worth  of  clothing.  For  this  he 
was  arrested  and  locked  up  in  the 
station-house,  and  there  thanked 
God  that  at  last  he  could  be  thawed 
out  and  have  his  stomach  full  of 
relishable  food."  If  the  present  sys- 
tem of  society  and  civilization  makes 
it  impossible  for  an  honest  man  to 
support  himself,  society  must  do  it 
for  him.  For  a  living  he  must  and 
will  have.  Society"  certainly  does 
owe  a  man  a  living,  if  society  has 
previously  robbed  him  of  it  or  per- 
mitted him  to  be  robbed,  and  much 
more  so  if  the  robbery  be  legal 
robbery. 

Comprehensive  representation 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  155 

would  result  in  comprehensive  legis- 
lation, and  comprehensive  legisla- 
tion, in  comprehensive  labor,  i.  e., 
steady  work  for  one  and  all. 


156  PO  VER TY '  S  FA CTOR Y. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

A  LIMIT   TO   ALL  THINGS. 

"  THE  most  glaring  sign  of  our 
national  corruption  is  the  rapid 
growth  of  economic  inequality.  Even 
under  a  monarchical  form  of  govern- 
ment the  concentration  of  powers 
into  the  hands  of  a  few  is  considered 
dangerous,  but  in  a  democracy  it  is 
far  more  dangerous  ;  it  is  fatal  to  the 
very  existence  of  the  state."  So 
says  the  brainy  author  of  "  The  Eise 
of  the  Swiss  Republic." 

If  the  forces  which  create  these 
abnormal  extremes  of  wealth  and 
poverty  are  allowed  to  work  on  un- 
checked, blind,  ignorant,  or  preju- 
diced indeed  must  be  he  who  cannot 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  157 

foresee  the  inevitable  and  disastrous 
result  to  society  and  the  nation.  If 
laws  continue  to  be  of  the  few,  for 
the  few,  and  by  the  few,  the  time  will 
arrive  when  the  limit  of  endurance 
will  be  reached ;  when  patience  on 
the  part  of  the  oppressed  will  cease 
to  be  a  virtue  ;  when  civilization  and 
society  will  become  top-heavy,  an 
immense  mass  of  gold  at  the  top,  air 
and  water  at  the  bottom  ;  and  when 
in  short  it  will  collapse  and  enter  the 
horrors  and  throes  of  a  revolutionary 
new  birth.  If  the  disintegrating 
forces  at  present  at  work  are  not 
checked  by  the  ballot,  they  must  and 
will  be  by  the  bullet.  We  are  surely 
and  steadily  approaching  either  a  ref- 
ormation or  a  revolution.  The  pres- 
ent creation  of  extremes  will,  if  not 
counteracted,  go  forward  until  a  ratio 
is  reached  which  will  be  in  the  very 
nature  of  things  intolerable.  To  this, 


158  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

common  sense,  reason,    and  history 
alike  bear  abundant  testimony. 

"When  Rome  went  down  1,800 
men  owned  all  the  world.  When 
Babylon  went  down  two  per  cent 
of  her  population  owned  all  the 
wealth.  Already  in  the  United  States 
three-fifths  of  the  entire  wealth  is 
owned  by  31,000  persons,"  and,  as 
stated  in  the  Supreme  Court,  two  per 
cent  of  our  citizens  have  secured  con- 
trol of  ninety  per  cent  of  the  earning 
capacities  of  all  the  rest.  In  fact,  so 
sensitive  has  the  general  status  be- 
come, that  so  high  an  authority  as 
Mr.  Justice  Brown  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  expressed 
the  fear  that  the  decision  against  the 
constitutionality  of  the  Income  Tax 
might  "  prove  the  first  step  towards 
the  submergence  of  the  liberties  of 
.the  people  in  a  sordid  despotism  of 
wealth,  and  is  fraught  with  immeas- 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  159 

urable  danger  to  the  future  of  the 
country,"  and  led  his  colleague,  Mr. 
Justice  White,  to  speak  of  "the  red 
spectre  of  revolution  shaking  the 
foundations  of  the  Union,"  and  elic- 
ited the  solemn  strictures  of  Mr. 
Justice  Harlan  of  the  same  high 
tribunal  when  he  put  the  forcible 
question,  "  Is  a  given  body  of  people 
in  one  corner  of  the  United  States, 
although  owning  vast  properties, 
from  which  uncounted  millions  are 
regularly  derived,  of  more  conse- 
quence in  the  eye  of  the  constitution 
and  of  the  judicial  tribunals  of  the 
land  than  the  like  number  of  people 
in  other  parts  of  the  country  who  do 
not  enjoy  the  same  prosperity  ?  Are 
those  in  whose  behalf  arguments  are 
made"  (i.  e.,  the  very  wealthy)  "  that 
rest  upon  favoritism,  by  the  law- 
making  power,  to  .mere  property  and 
to  particular  sections  of  the  country, 


160  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

aware  that  they  are  provoking  a  con- 
test which,  in  some  countries,  has 
swept  away,  in  a  tempest  of  frenzy 
and  passion,  existing  social  organiza- 
tions and  put  in  peril  all  that  was 
dear  to  the  friends  of  law  and  order  ?" 

Let  the  reader  ever  rememher  that 
these  are  not  the  groundless  utter- 
ances of  anarchists,  communists,  or 
revolutionary  lahor-leaders  of  the 
Eugene  V.  Debs  stripe  ;  but  the  in- 
telligent convictions  and  deliberate 
declarations  of  cool  and  calm  thinkers 
who  enjoy  the  honor  of  surveying 
the  situation  from  the  heights  of  one 
of  the  most  dispassionate  judicial 
rostra  on  earth. 

I  repeat  the  words  of  the  Hon.  W. 
J.  Gaynor :  "The  prime  object  of 
government  is  to  promote  distrib- 
utive justice,  and  thereby  render 
the  governed  stable  and  content,  and 
no  government  which  does  not  do 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  161 

this  may,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
long  endure."  "The  freest  govern- 
ment cannot  long  endure,"  said 
Daniel  Webster,  "  where  the  tend- 
ency of  the  law  is  to  create  a  rapid 
accumulation  of  property  in  the  hands 
of  a  few,  and  to  render  the  masses  of 
people  poor  and  dependent." 

As  long  therefore  as  we  permit 
such  concentration  of  wealth  and 
consequent  impoverishment  to  con- 
tinue, so  long  we  are,  though  perhaps 
unconsciously  but  none  the  less  really, 
swinging  a  cycle  of  historical  same- 
ness, and  treading  in  the  footsteps 
of  Egypt,  Babylon,  and  Eome,  in  the 
ruins  of  whose  once  glorious  palaces 
and  seemingly  impregnable  fortresses 
the  lizard  now  makes  his  home  and 
the  serpent  crawls  betimes  as  king. 

To  my  mind  one  of  the  most  signifi- 
cant and  serious  signs  of  the  times 

is  the    fact    that    labor  unions  are 
it 


162  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

strongly  urging  their  men  to  with- 
draw membership  from  the  National 
Guard.  Such  a  startling  resolution 
without  explanation  attached  was 
unanimously  passed  February  15th, 
1895,  by  the  United  Mine  Workers  in 
national  convention  assembled,  under 
the  spirited  leadership  of  Pres.  John 
McBride.  This  action  seems  to  be 
nothing  less  than  a  quiet,  prophetic 
preparation  for  some  impending 
denoiiement,  a  taking  of  sides  in  ad- 
A^ance  for  some  approaching  struggle. 
Else,  why  withdraw  from  so  patriotic 
an  organization  as  the  National 
Guard  ? 

All  these  potent  signs  of  the  times, 
the  growing  discontent,  •  the  increas- 
ing perplexity,  the  general  feverish- 
ness,  the  silent  but  steady  exertion  of 
opposing  parties,  plainly  tell  us  that 
forces  of  destruction  "swifter  and 
more  terrible  than  those  that  have 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  103 

shattered  every  preceding  civilization 
are  already  menacing  ours  ;  that  if 
it  does  not  quickly  rise  to  a  higher 
moral  level  ;  if  it  does  not  in  deed  as 
in  word  become  a  Christian  civiliza- 
tion," the  handwriting  of  Omnip- 
otent Justice  must  sooner  or  later 
flame  out  the  awful  word  "  TEKEL," 
"Thou  art  weighed  in  the  balances 
and  art  found  wanting." 


164           POVEETY' S  FACTOR T. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  DUTY  OP  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE 
CLERGY. 

WHAT  shall  be  the  attitude  of  the 
Christian  Church  to  the  issues  at 
present  and  consequent  ? 

First.  It  should  not  be  an  attitude 
of  proud  infallibility.  It  is  humili- 
ating indeed  to  contemplate  the  fal- 
libility, not  of  the  Master's  Christian- 
ity, but  of  that  of  His  professed  fol- 
lowers. Col.  T.  W.  Higginson  rings 
the  changes  on  this  subject  when  he 
says  :  ' '  With  the  seething  problems 
of  social  reform  penetrating  all  our 
community  and  raising  the  question 
whether  one  day  the  whole  system  of 
competition  under  which  we  live  may 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  165 

not  be  swept  away  as  absolutely  as 
the  feudal  system  disappeared  before 
it  ;  with  the  questions  of  drunkenness 
and  prostitution  in  our  cities  ;  with 
the  mortgaged  farms  in  our  agricul- 
tural sections  ;  with  all  these  things 
pressing  upon  us,  it  is  hardly  time 
for  us  to  assume  the  attitude  of  in- 
fallibility before  the  descendants  of 
Plato  or  the  disciples  of  Gautama 
Buddha." 

Secondly.  The  Church  should  not 
swing  from  one  extreme  of  proud  in- 
fallibility to  the  other  of  selfish  indif- 
ference. Prof.  Francis  G.  Peabody 
says  that  "to-day  the  centre  of  in- 
terest lies  in  what  we  call  the  social 
question,  the  needs  and  hopes  of  so- 
ciety, its  inequalities  of  condition, 
its  industrial  conflicts,  its  dreams  of 
a  better  order.  With  a  great  sud- 
denness there  has  spread  through  all 
the  civilized  countries  a  startling 


1 66  POVERTY ' S  FA CTOR Y. 

gospel  of  discontent,  a  new  restless- 
ness, a  new  conception  of  philan- 
thropy. The  inevitable  reaction 
from  the  too  common  religious 
avoidance  of  the  social  question  has 
come.  If  the  Christian  Church  is 
to  have  no  interest  in  the  social  dis- 
tresses and  problems  of  the  time,  then 
those  who  are  most  concerned  ivith 
such  problems  and  distresses  will 
have  no  interest  in  the  Christian 
Church."  "A  new  era  is  even  now 
dawning  upon  civilized  nations,  in 
which  mere  international  questions 
will  be  overshadowed  by  the  great 
economic  and  social  problems  "  (Mc- 
Crackan). 

Prof.  Richard  T.  Ely,  one  of  the 
most  celebrated  modern  writers  on 
economic-  and  social  questions,  says : 
"Judaism  was  a  social  force,  and  its 
aim  was  to  establish  an  ideal  com- 
monwealth in  which  neither  pauper- 


FACTORY.  167 

ism  nor  plutocracy  should  be  known. 
But  we  may  go  even  further  and  say 
that  it  was  the  avowed  aim  that 
Israel  should  be  kept  from  both  pov- 
erty and  riches.  The  prayer  of  Agur 
is  simply  an  expression  of  a  national 
ideal  never  fully  attained,  but  never 
forgotten  by  noble  souls  in  Israel. 
Every  revival  of  pure  religion  meant 
an  effort  to  reach  this  ideal  of  na- 
tional life.  The  prophets  were  great 
social  reformers  who  voiced  the 
yearning  cry  of  the  nation  for  right- 
eous social  conditions" 

"Jesus  came,"  continues  Prof. 
Ely,  "  with  an  avowed  determination 
to  do  two  things — to  break  down 
the  ceremonial  law,  which  confined 
within  narrow  limits  the  circle  of 
brotherhood,  rendering  it  merely  na- 
tional, and,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
extend  to  universality  the  benefits  of 
the  social  law  of  Moses.  And  it  was 


168  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

of  this  law  He  said  not  one  jot  or 
tittle  should  pass  away  until  all 
should  be  fulfilled. 

"Christianity  then  as  a  social 
force  seeks  to  universalize  the  socio- 
economic  institutions  of  the  Jews. 
The  exact  law  of  Moses,  however, 
respecting  land  and  interest,  for 
example,  cannot  be  reproduced  in 
modern  society.  But  all  who  profess 
allegiance  to  Jesus  Christ  must  en- 
deavor to  universalize  their  spirit. 
The  church  is  a  universal  anti-poverty 
society,  or  else  she  is  false  to  her 
founder.  It  is  hoped  that  I  will  not 
be  misunderstood,"  begs  Prof.  Ely, 
"  in  saying  that  she  also  stands  for 
anti-millionairism,  because  extremes 
are  subversive  of  brotherhood." 

"Christianity,"  he  concludes, 
"means  a  mighty  transformation 
and  turning  of  things  upside  down, 
and  while  it  seeks  to  bring  about  the 


POVERTY •'£  FACTORY.  169 

most  radical  changes  in  peace,  it  has 
forces  within  it  which  nothing  can 
withstand,  and  resistance  to  which  is 
sure  to  result  in  revolutionary  vio- 
lence." 

It  is  certainly  coming  to  be  felt 
by  all  progressive  people  that  the 
Church  should  arouse  her  mighty 
but  slumbering  potencies,  and  should 
now  step  forth  from  both  positions, 
that  of  indifference  and  that  of  in- 
fallibility. Thinking  men  believe 
that  the  time  has  come  not  only  for 
earnest  study  of  the  great  questions 
involved,  but  for  practical  action  on 
the  part  of  Christ's  Church. 

What  then,  brethren,*  are  we,  as 
Christian  preachers  and  embassadors 
of  the  truth-loving  and  error-destroy- 
ing Son  of  God,  to  do  in  the  present 

*  This  paper  was  read  before  the  Reformed 
Ministerium  of  Reading,  Pa.,  and  the  author 
was  urged  to  IIPVP  it  published. 


170  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

deplorable  state  of  things  ?  Are  we 
to  convene  and  with  solemn  faces  and 
sanctimonious  sighs  pass  resolutions 
deeply  deploring  the  situation? 
While  we  go  on  deploring,  the  devil 
goes  on  damning.  What  are  we  to 
do?  Are  we  to  investigate  condi- 
tions, discover  the  gigantic  and 
strongly  entrenched  evils,  expose 
them  publicly,  and  thus  warn,  in- 
struct, educate,  and  arouse  the  peo- 
ple ?  Surely  so.  That  is  one  power- 
ful push  the  ministry  can  give 
towards  hastening  the  coming  re- 
formation or  reconstruction. 

But  is  that  all  we  can  do  ?  No, 
certainly  not.  We  can  all  personally, 
as  citizens,  leap  down  from  our 
pulpits  and  come  forth  from  the 
quiet  and  congenial  seclusion  of  our 
studies,  and  enter  right  into  the  midst 
of  the  existing  muddle  and  take  a 
hand  in  the  fray  ourselves.  Says  the 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  171 

Eev.  Dr.  Parkhurst,  unquestionably 
the  foremost  living  authority  on  the 
question  of  the  preacher's  place  in 
politics  :"  Men  are  not  only  under 
obligations  to  stand  up  and  declare 
what  ought  to  be  done,  and  what  the 
collective  character  of  the  community 
ought  to  be,  but  they  are  bound  to 
stand  forth  in  the  midst  of  the  com- 
munity as  men  of  God,  to  become  the 
channels  that  shall  make  the  attain- 
ment of  our  civic  destiny  a  realized 
fact."  The  author  of  "  Swiss  Solu- 
tions of  American  Problems"  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  "Zwingli 
began  his  work  as  a  political  re- 
former ;  his  first  efforts  were  directed 
against  political  abuses,  and  some  of 
his  noblest  words  were  spoken  in  the 
cause  of  pure  government.  It  was 
not  till  he  found  all  his  exertions  in 
this  field  baffled  by  ecclesiastical  in- 
trigues that  he  began  to  attack  cer- 


172  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

tain  doctrines  of  the  Church."  And 
Zwingli  was  a  Reformed  preacher. 
The  great  reformation  commenced  in 
the  political  sphere. 

When  lives  are  to  be  saved  from 
shipwreck,  the  life-savers  don't  carry 
a  baby  organ  or  brass  band  down  to 
the  beach,  and  all  sitting  around  it 
feelingly  sing,  "  Rescue  the  perish- 
ing, care  for  the  dying. "  No.  With 
proper  appliances  they  plunge  into 
the  raging  surf  themselves  and  seek 
to  save  the  lost,  hand  to  hand.  Simi- 
larly, when  the  Divine  One  yearned 
to  save  a  perishing  race,  He  didn't 
mass  the  celestial  choirs,  harpists, 
elders,  and  countless  myriads  of 
angels  on  the  walls  of  heaven,  and 
directing  them  to  gaze  down  and  be- 
hold the  suffering  sons  of  men  sink- 
ing and  seething  in  sin,  command 
them  to  strike  up  the  same  stirring 
song.  No,  no  !  He  came  to  seek  and 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  173 

to  save  the  lost.  He  came!  He 
came  !  He  didn't,  cowardlike,  seek  a 
substitute  or  organize  a  society  to  do 
this  work  for  Him,  so  as  to  keep  His 
own  hands  clean  and  His  dignity  un- 
compromised  !  No.  He  came  !  Came 
ri<jlit  clown  into  the  miserable  mud- 
dle, and  fought  and  bled  and  died 
there  ! 

Duty,  love,  courage,  country,  con- 
sistency, Christ,  demand  that,  until 
industrial  and  professional  represen- 
tation is  a  verity  in  this  land, 
preachers  should  go  down  as  or- 
dinary citizens  to  do  an  ordinary  cit- 
izen's duty,  and  should  appear  at  the 
primaries  as  well  as  at  the  polls. 
If  it  is  not  dishonorable  to  vote  for 
political  minions  at  the  polls,  it  is 
certainly  not  dishonorable  to  fight 
against  them  at  the  primaries.  The 
need  of  the  hour  is  the  Christianiza- 
tion  of  politics  and  the  destruction  of 


174  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

mere  partisanship.  Preachers  at  the 
primaries  would  largely  contribute 
to  purify  politics,  especially  if  they 
can  induce  their  leading  laymen  to 
go  along,  and  all  pull  together,  not 
for  party,  but  for  principle.  The 
primaries  are  the  primaries.  Until 
something  better  can  be  done,  purify 
these  little  fountains,  and  the  great 
stream  of  their  commingling  will 
purify  itself. 

In  1861  President  Lincoln  issued 
his  famous  proclamation  appointing 
a  day  for  solemn  fasting  and  prayer. 
That  proclamation  had  no  small 
effect  in  rousing  the  clergy  to  their 
duty  in  the  then  dreadful  impending 
crisis.  To-day  the  country  mutely 
appeals  again.  In  the  impending 
crisis  men  are  instinctively  turning 
to  the  Church  and  asking,  ' '  Is  there 
no  help  in  Zion  ?  Is  there  no  balm  in 
Gilead?"  Should  not  the  ministry 


POVERTY'S  FACTORY.  175 

be  a  fearless  voice  in  the  wilderness, 
and  a  speaking  conscience  in  the 
land  ?  Should  not  Christian  preach- 
ers more  heroically  take  the  place 
of  the  Old  Testament  prophets,  and 
voice,  ceaselessly  voice,  the  yearning 
cry  of  the  nation's  millions  for  right- 
eous social  conditions  ?  Would  to 
God  they  would  do  this,  even  this  ! 
But  they  ought  to  do  something 
more,  viz.,  an  average  citizen's  duty. 
This  they  will  do  if  they  have  any 
affectionate  regard  whatever  for 
their  municipality,  their  state,  their 
country,  and  their  children. 

No  more  fitting  words  can  be 
found  with  which  to  close  this  paper 
than  those  uttered  shortly  before  his 
untimely  death  by  that  conscientious, 
progressive,  and  thoroughly  Chris- 
tian brother  of  ours,  Dr.,  or  I  should 
rather  say,  citizen  Phillips  Brooks. 
He  was  addressing  intelligent  lay- 


176  POVERTY'S  FACTORY. 

men,  but  I  shall  apply  his  burning 
words  to  the  Christian  ministry  at 
large.  This  then  is  that  consecrated 
man's  last  verbal  legacy  to  us  : 

"I  plead  with  you  for  all  that 
makes  strong  citizens.  First,  clear 
convictions,  deep,  careful,  patient 
study  of  the  government  under 
which  we  live.  And  then  a  clear 
conscience,  as  much  ashamed  of 
public  as  of  private  sin,  as  ready  to 
hate  and  rebuke  and  vote  down  cor- 
ruption in  the  state,  in  your  own 
party,  as  you  would  be  in  your  own 
church ;  as  ready  to  bring  the  one  as 
the  other  to  the  judgment  of  a  living 
God.  And  then  unselfishness ;  an 
earnest  and  exalted  sense  that  you 
are  for  the  land,  and  not  alone 
the  land  for  you  ;  something  of  the 
self-sacrifice  which  they  showed  who 
died  for  us  from  '61  to  '65.  And 
then  activity  ;  the  readiness  to  wake 


PO  VER  TY'S  FA  CTOR  Y.  177 

and  watch  and  do  a  citizen 'a  work 
untiringly,  counting  it  as  base  not 
to  vote  at  an  election,  not  to  vorl- 
ayainst  a  bad  official,  or  to  u'orTc  for 
a  good  one,  as  it  would  have  been  to 
shirk  a  battle  in  the  war.  Such 
strong  citizenship  let  there  be  among 
tis ;  such  knightly  doing  of  our 
duties  on  the  field  of  peace." 

12 


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